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CABBAGES AND KINGS 

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH, THE KAISER 
AND HIS COURT, THE SCANDINAVIAN DEM- 
OCRACIES, THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE, AND 
THE COURTS OF ITALY : : : 



BY 

H.R. H. THE INFANTA 
EULALIA OF SPAIN 



iW? <U*,H!;-V>.}j 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO, 

1914 



Copyright, 1914, by 
The Century Co. 



DEC 23 1914 

'CI.A'JJJ1085 
%0j 



1 



,7 
£8 



England and the English 



IN 1887, Queen Christina ordered me 
to go to England to represent her at 
the festivities with which the Jubilee of 
Queen Victoria's reign was celebrated. 
Wearing a mantilla, in order to make it 
plain to the public that Spain was taking 
a part in the national rejoicings, I was 
taken through the streets of London in the 
triumph of the great queen. 

As a rule, on such occasions, one fixes 
one's face in a smile, tries to think of some- 
thing agreeable, and bows from side to 
side with the regularity of a clockwork 
figure. As it was, I was interested to 
watch the crowd lining the streets through 
which the procession passed, for I had not 
been in England before, and was curious 
to see all I could of the English people. 
And as I looked at the sea of faces, it 
seemed to me that they were thousands of 
masks, the changeless expression of which 
gave no clue to the thoughts of the wear- 
ers. And whenever I have seen an Eng- 
lish crowd, even at a foot-ball match, the 
expressionless faces have baffled me, and I 
have felt my inability to understand it. 
Indeed, although I have spent a great part 
of my life in England, I have never been 
able to understand the English people. I 
have been at court, stayed in fashionable 
houses, hidden myself for weeks at a time 
in the homes of middle-class people. I 
know Cornwall and Yorkshire, have stayed 
in London, Tunbridge Wells, Brighton, 
and a dozen other places, but all the same 
England remains for me a puzzle which I 
cannot understand. 

Certain features of English life, how- 
ever, have impressed me. To begin with, 
I was amazed at the extravagance and 
luxury of the wealthy and the stupidity 
of the lives the majority of them lead. 
History teaches that luxury is the death 
of a nation, and unless the improbable 
happens and the upper classes set to work 
to simplify their lives, there is nothing to 
save England from ruin. The nobility 



has been corrupted by cosmopolitan finan- 
ciers, and now demands a standard of lux- 
ury unknown in the households of great 
nobles on the Continent. Country houses 
are turned into hotels, at which board and 
lodging are supplied free of charge, and 
the guests make their own arrangements 
with as much freedom as they would were 
a bill presented at the end of their visit. 

Accustomed to this mode of life, Eng- 
lishmen do not usually realize that in for- 
eign countries customs are different, and 
that, as a rule, the luxury they are used to 
at home is beyond the means of even the 
rich. I well remember the consternation 
that reigned in the palace at Madrid when 
some of the gentlemen who attended the 
present queen, when she came to Spain 
for her marriage with my nephew, King 
Alfonso, behaved as if they were in an 
English country house, and ordered the 
court lackeys to bring bottles of royal port 
and other delicacies to their rooms. There 
was not a grandee about the court to 
whom it had ever occurred that guests 
could behave in such a fashion. When I 
say that Spaniards were shocked at such 
conduct, I am speaking mildly. 

With luxury has come a great decline 
in English manners; in fact, so far as I 
am able to judge, it appears to be consid- 
ered smart to affect bad manners, if one 
has not the good luck to have them natu- 
rally. Good form now requires that the 
little courtesies of life, the dignity which 
used to be considered a sign of good breed- 
ing, should be set aside and forgotten. 
Here is a case in point. I was staying in 
a country house, and one morning had oc- 
casion to pass through the smoking-room, 
where I remarked a well-known duke 
sprawling on a sofa, with his feet propped 
up on the cushions at the end. 

"Good morning, ma'am," he said when 
he saw me enter, and he continued to read 
his paper without making any effort to 
change his ungainly attitude. 

3 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



It is not because I am a princess, but 
because I am a woman, that I consider the 
duke ill mannered. I am not likely to for- 
get the look of horror and amazement on 
the face of a Spanish lady who saw the 
little scene. She was not well acquainted 
with the manners of the "best people" in 
England. 

In most countries people go to their 
estates to be at their ease, to enjoy them- 
selves simply, and to lead a healthier and 
more rational life than in the towns. Dur- 
ing my brother's reign, for instance, it 
never entered the heads of any of us to 
put on low dresses for dinner when the 
court was in the country. In England 
things are ordered differently. The elab- 
oration of life in a country house is as 
great as it is in Park Lane; indeed, it ap- 
pears to me that the women spend most 
of their time in dressing up. 

I w r ould be generous to the woman 
whose chief aim in life is to be pretty. I 
would allow her three hours in the morn- 
ing for her toilet, ample time for bath and 
massage and coiffure, and one hour in the 
evening. No woman ought to allow herself 
a minute more. The English country- 
house girl seems to have no time to settle 
down to any serious work, because she is 
perpetually changing her clothes. After 
her maid has finished the long process of 
beautifying her for the day, she appears at 
breakfast in a simple frock, and contrives 
to look an ingenuous, breezy, open-air per- 
son. By luncheon-time she has metamor- 
phosed herself into a slightly bored woman 
of the world, and is wearing a rather more 
elaborate gown. At tea one finds her in a 
floppy confection of lace and filmy fabrics 
and, with this costume, she puts on a new 
manner. One forgets that in the morning 
she was an energetic, athletic person, for 
her tea-gown manner suggests lassitude 
and inability to do anything but recline on 
a sofa or lean back in a great chair. Span- 
iards are greatly surprised the first time 
that they see the way in which English- 
women flop about on sofas, and I have 
heard foreigners laughingly and a little 
disdainfully talk of les odalisques an- 
glaises. Even when abroad English la- 



dies display a freedom of manyer which 
foreigners consider simply vulgar. 

One summer day when the Spanish 
court was in the country, Queen Chris- 
tina came to me with a look of sheer con- 
sternation on her face. . 

"Eulalia," she said, "I have seen an ap- 
palling sight— the Englishwoman lying on 
the grass in the park." 

The culprit was a lady-in-waiting w T ho 
had been brought to Spain by an English 
princess then visiting the court. 

"That 's nothing," I said, laughing; 
"they all do that sort of thing in England." 

Queen Christina was an Austrian arch- 
duchess before her marriage with my 
brother, accustomed to a court in which a 
rigid code of manners obtains, and I do 
not think that anybody could have con- 
vinced her that a woman who was really 
well-bred would allow herself to lie down 
outside the privacy of her own boudoir. 

But to return to the fashionable Eng- 
lishwoman's arduous day. Before dinner 
she discards her tea-gown and appears in 
the drawing-room with a new T manner and, 
so it always seems to me, a new face. She 
is not in the least like the breezy young 
person of the morning, the elegant woman 
of the world one saw at luncheon, or- the 
languid creature who wearily drank tea. 
She enters the room, looking alert, a little 
like an actress cast to play the part of an 
adventuress. The look on her face indi- 
cates that she feels her power. She poses 
as the temptress, aware of her seductive 
charm and the effect of her frankly sug- 
gestive frock. And her conversation is 
often what the French call inconvenable. 
She deliberately creates the impression that 
she herself and all her friends are pro- 
foundly immoral. On Sundays, with neat 
books of devotion in their hands, the cha- 
meleon-like English ladies ornament spe- 
cial pews in village churches. Apart from 
its extraordinary variations, English re- 
ligion is a puzzle to the foreigner. That 
the upper classes are sincere in their re- 
ligion I have no doubt ; but habit and sen- 
timent, rather than serious conviction, ap- 
pear to be the basis of their attachment to 
the Established Church. 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



The stupidity of fashionable English so- 
ciety is extraordinary. To speak of serious 
subjects appears to be considered bad form, 
and the daring person who begins to speak 
of some question of serious interest in an 
English country house runs the risk of 
being crushed by frowns or contemptuous 
silence. As the English lack the vivacity 
and wit of Latin peoples, conversation is 
reduced to an interchange of vapid re- 
marks. 

"I had a green ice because it looks so 
dreadfully immoral," remarked an Eng- 
lish hostess at a dinner-table. 

Could anything more silly or inane have 
been said ? Yet the remark was typically 
English, for the only relief allowed to the 
banality of conversation is perpetual in- 
sistence that everybody present is pro- 
foundly immoral. 

The royal family sets an example of 
sobriety of manners to the country, but it 
is not able to exercise any great influence 
on society, which goes its way uncon- 
cerned. Humanity is so perverse that vir- 
tuous princes are usually less popular than 
those who set a less edifying example, and 
although King George and Queen Mary 
have won the respect of the middle classes 
and the sober elements of the nation, they 
are hardly likely to stem the torrent of 
corrupting luxury which is ruining the no- 
bility. The influence of the other mem- 
bers of the royal family is not great. I 
have found that the middle classes take a 
profound interest in the domestic habits 
of English princesses, but as the life-work 
of these ladies consists primarily in open- 
ing bazaars, their opportunities of useful- 
ness are strictly limited. 

My own recollections of the English 
court are extremely agreeable. My first 
acquaintance with the English royal fam- 
ily was in Madrid, when King Edward, 
then Prince of Wales, came with his 
brother, the Duke of Connaught, one of 
the most charming princes in Europe, to 
be present at the festivities given in honor 
of the marriage of my brother. Both the 
princes were lively and full of fun, and I 
was impressed with the cleverness and 
shrewdness displayed by the Prince of 



Wales. He was, above all, a man of the 
world. He knew instinctively how to deal 
with people of every sort, and his tact was 
unfailing. It certainly did not fail him 
on one occasion when I saw him placed in 
a very comical and embarrassing situation. 
We were both at a dinner-party in a great 
London house, and among the guests was 
a lady who bore an historic Italian title. 
She was English by birth, and before her 
marriage had been famous in London so- 
ciety for her great beauty and her charm 
of manner. A wealthy Jew, who shall be 
disguised under the name of Abraham, 
was madly in love with her, and her 
friends, including King Edward, saw his 
growing infatuation with concern. 

"Don't you marry that man," was the 
advice given her, peremptorily, but good- 
naturedly, by King Edward. 

But marry him she did ; not, however, 
before he had been to Italy and bought the 
palace and the pompous title of an impov- 
erished Florentine noble. Of this fact the 
king was unaware, and when the lady was 
presented to him at the dinner-party as 

the Marchesa di X , he smiled and 

said : 

"I am delighted to meet you again as 

the Marchesa di X , and so thankful 

you did n't marry that awful Abraham." 

A few moments later the king observed 
that the "awful Abraham" was standing 
close by and had heard the unfortunate 
remark. Without turning a hair, he 
smiled at him and congratulated him heart- 
ily on his marriage. 

The king was an extremely punctual 
man, and when I stayed with him and 
Queen Alexandra at Sandringham, some- 
body used always to come and warn me 
ten minutes before meal-times that I must 
not keep him waiting. For some unknown 
reason, he had all the clocks in the house 
set half an hour in advance of the right 
time, and one of the first things that 
guests at Sandringham learned was the 
existence of this curious practice. The 
king liked to be amused, and as English- 
men are not as a rule witty or good racon- 
teurs, there used to be one or two foreign- 
ers about the court who, although they did 



6 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



not wear the cap and bells which would 
have defined their functions in an earlier 
age, played the part of court jester admira- 
bly, and enlivened conversation at the din- 
ner-table with praiseworthy persistence. 

The Russian princess, known best in 
England as the Duchess of Edinburgh, 
and now Duchess of Coburg, was unable 
to adapt herself to life in a strange coun- 
try. It is a canon of court etiquette that 
imperial personages take precedence of 
royal personages, and consequently it was 
held in Russia that the Duchess of Edin- 
burgh, being a daughter of the Emperor 
of Russia, should take precedence of the 
Princess of Wales, who was merely the 
daughter of a king. Queen Alexandra is 
so amiable that I believe she would have 
contentedly allowed the duchess and any- 
body else who wanted to do so to pass be- 
fore her; but obviously the wife of the 
heir to the throne could not be permitted 
to take any place but the first after the 
sovereign. What was to be done ? Queen 
Victoria solved the difficulty very cleverly. 
She caused herself to be proclaimed Em- 
press of India, and the claims put forward 
for the duchess immediately fell to the 
ground. The assumption of imperial rank 
by the queen was undoubtedly dictated by 
political considerations, but the solution of 
the difficulty created by the exasperating 
conservatism of court etiquette was an 
argument which weighed with her when 
she took the decisive step. 

In no country is the veneration of roy- 
alty carried to greater lengths than in 
England. The English cease to be a prac- 
tical people when royalty is concerned, 
and it was foreigners, and not English- 
men, who were able to see the amusing 
side of the elaborate arrangements made 
for the coronation of Edward VII. The 
only coronations which can still be re- 
garded seriously are those of the pope and 
of the czar, for in both cases the ceremony 
fitly symbolizes the great power with 
which both these sovereigns is invested. 
The King of England is a constitutional 
sovereign denuded of power, and he has 
already been in full enjoyment of the priv- 
ileges he possesses for a year before he is 



crowned. His coronation gives him ro 
new rights or privileges, and the kings of 
Spain do not find their position affected 
by dispensing with the ceremony alto- 
gether. In the twentieth century a cere- 
mony that has no raison d'etre is a mas- 
querade, and it is therefore impossible for 
an outsider to regard a modern English 
coronation in any other light. For months 
before King Edward was crowned, the 
newspapers published news about the com- 
ing ceremony, and the decisions of the 
court which heard the claims of various 
persons to play a part in it were chronicled 
as if they were matters of enormous im- 
portance. It did not appear to strike any- 
body that nobody would be a penny the 
worse whether the Duke of Newcastle or 
somebody else touched the king's heels 
with the royal spurs, and not the boldest 
would have dared to whisper that it was 
actually a matter of supreme indifference 
whether this detail of a medieval ceremony 
was performed or not. 

Apart from their odd superstitions in 
regard to royalty, the middle classes, which 
form the backbone of the nation, are, to 
my mind, far more worthy of esteem than 
the so-called nobility. I have stayed a 
good many times in pleasant middle-class 
homes, and enjoyed myself immensely. 
The old-fashioned courtesy shown in such 
homes is delightful. When I once make 
it clear to host and hostess that I desire 
them to forget that I am Infanta of Spain 
and wish to be treated as an ordinary per- 
son, their tact and innate politeness does 
the rest, and, etiquette banished, I am al- 
lowed to do as I like. I have my English 
breakfast, I occupy my time as I wish, I 
play at tennis and ride, and I find myself 
one of the family. Then I forget about 
the smart people and feel myself in the Old 
England I love and respect— the England 
which is vanishing, poisoned by the flood 
of corruption from the upper classes. 
Their example is ruining the nation and, 
although there is a good deal of talk about 
democratic principles in England, the 
democratic spirit which might serve as an 
antidote to the influence of the rich is 
hardly to be found. Everybody wants to 



ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 



be a gentleman or lady, to be dressed in 
the height of fashion, to talk and act like 
the silliest section of the nation. Were the 
democratic spirit strong, the finer elements 
of the nation would pride themselves on 
being more sensible than the frivolous rich, 
and disdain to imitate them. 

As I have said, the middle classes form 
the backbone of English society, but even 
they have not entirely escaped from the 
devastating influence of smart society. 
The middle-class woman does not waste 
so much time on her toilet as the society 
woman and she usually refrains from 
painting her face, an art which is more 
elaborately practised in England than 
abroad, but even she appears to consider 
that it is improper to dine in a high dress. 
She does not particularly mind what sort 
of gown she wears, provided the bodice is 
cut low, and it does not appear to strike 
her that a woman who has not a pretty 
neck looks more charming in a high frock 
than in a low one. 

So imperious is fashion that people will 
not venture into the stalls of a theater if 
they are not in evening dress. In Ger- 
many a man goes straight from his work 
to the opera, where he meets his wife, and 
the two sup together afterward. Doubt- 
less numbers of Englishmen would visit 
the theater more often were it not that 
when they arrive home, tired after the 
day's work, they are disinclined to change 
into what they call "glad rags," on which 
the decolletee wife insists, and so they pre- 
fer to stay at home or to spend the eve- 
ning at a club. 

In the great English schools, boys learn 
how to play cricket and foot-ball, they are 
taught a smattering of the classics, while 
modern languages are greatly neglected 
and numbers of boys leave school without 
having learned to write their own lan- 
guage gracefully and with distinction. I 
once went to an entertainment at one of 
the great English schools, and the boys 
performed a little play. 

"I hope your royal Highness has been 
pleased with the acting," remarked the 
head master to me, when the curtain fell. 

"Charming!" I said. "But unfortu- 



nately I could not follow the action, as I 
do not understand Greek." 

"But it was in French," replied the 
head master. 

The answer startled me, for French is 
the language I speak best. And after that 
experience I am no longer surprised to find 
that educated Englishmen are often un- 
able to make themselves understood when 
they cross the channel. 

It is perhaps the poverty of the educa- 
tion given them that makes Englishmen so 
deficient in that souplesse which distin- 
guishes the conversation of Frenchmen. 
The people one meets in England who can 
talk gracefully have usually foreign blood 
in their veins. 

"I hope you do not mind my smoking 
your cigarettes, ma'am," said a man to me 
one day in the hall of a country house. 

"My cigarettes!" I said. "But I have 
n't any." 

He showed me the box which contained 
them. On the cover was written the name 
of the brand, Royal Beauties. It was a 
pretty and, at the same time, witty com- 
pliment which he had made me. 

"You are not English," I exclaimed, 
laughing. 

And he had to admit that his mother 
was American. 

But most women will be inclined to for- 
give most of the Englishman's faults be- 
cause he is so adorably handsome. And he 
does not trade on his beauty or appear to 
consider its advantages; in point of fact, 
your athletic, good-looking Englishman is 
the timidest creature in the world when 
faced by a pretty woman. The young man 
in Goldsmith's play who could make love 
to barmaids and housemaids, but was bash- 
ful and frightened in the presence of la- 
dies, is an essentially English type. 

I have drawn, to my mind, a sad, a dis- 
quieting picture of English society ; yet I 
see a hope of the regeneration of the na- 
tion. That hope lies in the labor party. 
Little by little the workers are strengthen- 
ing their position and making their power 
felt by the upper strata of society. If they 
are animated by a truly democratic spirit, 
the working-classes may save Old Eng- 



8 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



land. To envy the rich is treason to de- 
mocracy. The true democrat looks at their 
useless lives, their splendor and luxury, 
with contempt. He pities them. If the 
workers of England will make the rich 
envy the splendor and strength of those 



who toil and force them to see that their 
lives are stupid and empty, they'will bring 
salvation to the country. But the question 
that I ask myself, and to which I cannot 
see the answer is, Will the workers of 
England be true to democracy ? 



The Kaiser and His Court 



A GREAT crowd filled an immense 
hall of the gray castle which the past 
has left in the heart of modern Berlin. 
People of every rank stood shoulder to 
shoulder, for it was the one day of the year 
when the imperial court sets courage and 
faithful service before birth and noble an- 
cestry, the day of the Ordensfest. 

I was young, and I felt joyous and 
happy as I passed up the hall in the im- 
perial procession, with a page bearing my 
long manteau de cour. And every time 
that I turned from side to side to bow to 
the people, I caught a glimpse of the kaiser 
at the head of the procession, a silver fig- 
ure, like Lohengrin, on whose cuirass and 
helmet the light flashed. Before him 
walked four heralds in medieval dress, 
sounding silver trumpets, and when he 
reached the dais and stood before the 
throne, looking down the castle hall, I saw 
in his steel-blue eyes that look of exalta- 
tion which his profound and unshakable 
belief in the divinity of kings gives him. 

Was I a princess born in a democratic 
age, or was I living in the age of chivalry, 
or at the vanished Court of Versailles? 
Before me, as I went to the dais, stood an 
emperor as aware of his godlike qualities 
as Charlemagne when a pope set the unex- 
pected crown upon his brow, or as the Roi 
Soleil, unflattered by worship he believed 
to be his due. It seemed that I should 
have been one of those infantas of Velas- 
quez in a brocade dress and fluttering a 
little fan. 

The impression the kaiser made on me 
that morning of the Ordensfest was not 
new, though it came with fresh, almost 
startling, force. I had known him years 
before as Prince Wilhelm, simple, unaf- 
fected, joyous. Then he became crown 
prince, and I noted a change. His man- 
ner became more imperious, less spon- 
taneous. I felt that he was schooling 
himself, holding himself in check, aware of 
the burden of coming responsibilities, fear- 



ing, yet longing for, the golden irksome- 
ness of the imperial crown. Since he has 
ascended the throne, I have never met him 
without realizing that he is dominated by 
the belief that he is an instrument in the 
hands of the Almighty, divinely appointed 
to reign. Yet the emperor has still the 
charm of manner which made Prince 
Wilhelm so attractive, and there are mo- 
ments when he can unbend, when one may 
forget the 'sovereign and feel the charm of 
the man. 

As he conferred orders and decorations 
on the stream of men who humbly ap- 
proached his throne at the Ordensfest, I 
could see from their reverence and from 
the look of awe on their faces that his 
manner, his regal pose, his glance, had 
forced them to accept his own belief in the 
majesty and righteousness of kingship. 
But when we had passed to the great ban- 
queting-hall, he forgot for a moment to be 
godlike and became the charming Prince 
Wilhelm of the past. We sat at a table 
on a dais, looking down on the great com- 
pany invited to enjoy the emperor's hos- 
pitality, and we were served by young 
nobles. The page who had carried my 
train, a handsome boy who looked about 
twenty, stood behind my chair and handed 
dishes or filled my glass with the skill of a 
practised footman. It was the first time 
that a foreign princess had been present at 
the Ordensfest, and I had received a hint 
that it was customary to send the page, 
who served one, a present the following 
day, and I had learned that there was an 
unwritten law that the present should be 
a watch. I was sitting next the emperor, 
and suddenly he turned to my page with 
an almost roguish smile. 

"You are a happy boy," he said, "to 
have the privilege to serve the beautiful 
infanta" — sovereigns always know how to 
flatter— "What present would you like 
her to give you ?" 

"Sire," answered the page, "there is 

9 



10 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



nothing I should like her royal Highness 
to give me so much as the flower that 
caresses her neck." 

It was a courtly and charming reply. 

That was a little incident that relieved 
the tedium of a visit to the Schloss at Ber- 
lin ; for, despite the charm of host and 
hostess, I felt then, as I do in all palaces, 
that I was in prison. Indeed, to me the 
palace life is so irksome that when I hear 
the sentry pacing up and down outside my 
windows, I always feel that he is there to 
prevent me from going out more than to 
prevent other people from coming in. 
Whenever I have stayed with the kaiser 
and kaiserin, I have been given a beautiful 
suite of rooms ; but a prison is still a 
prison, however thick the gilding on the 
bars. Everything one does or says is 
noticed and talked about and criticized 
and spread abroad. All day long my 
Spanish lady-in-waiting sat in an ante- 
chamber with the German lady-in-waiting 
and the German chamberlain appointed to 
attend me. It was intolerable to think 
that these three persons were sitting there 
with nothing whatever to do but to specu- 
late on what I should take it into my head 
to do next and to exchange court gossip. 
In an outer chamber was another group of 
idlers, servants whose chief duty was to 
conduct me processionally from one part 
of the castle to another. 

Madame la Princesse appears in the 
antechamber, and the ladies make pro- 
found curtsies and the gentleman a pro- 
found bow. She smiles — princesses must 
always appear to be radiantly happy — and 
she tries to find something agreeable to say 
to each and not to make bad blood by 
being more agreeable to one than to an- 
other. She announces her desire to go to 
the kaiserin's apartments. The chamber- 
lain passes on that interesting information 
to the footmen in the outer antechamber. 
A procession is formed, and Madame la 
Princesse is conducted, with the pomp of a 
bishop entering a cathedral to say mass, to 
the other side of the castle. The proces- 
sion passes through the kaiserin's ante- 
chambers, where another army of servants 
is idling, and the ladies-in-waiting, who 



make profound curtsies and ^e gentle- 
men-in-waiting, who make profound bows, 
expect Madame la Princesse to smile and 
to repeat the gracious remarks about the 
state of the weather she has already made 
to the members of her own suite. The 
doors of the kaiserin's apartments are 
thrown open with becoming reverence, 
and Madame la Princesse disappears, leav- 
ing her suite to gossip with the kaiserin's, 
and probably to speculate on the nature of 
the royal conversation across the sacred 
threshold they may not pass unless bidden. 
A quarter of an hour elapses, and Madame 
la Princesse emerges, smiles at the bowing 
courtiers and curtseying ladies, and, feel- 
ing more like an idol than a human being, 
is solemnly conducted back and enshrined 
in her own apartments. 

The etiquette at Versailles in the time 
of Louis XVI could hardly be more exas- 
perating to a modern woman than that of 
Berlin in the twentieth century. Before 
luncheon and dinner processions converge 
from all parts of the castle, conducting 
members of the imperial family and royal 
guests to the drawing-room. 

"The kaiser will be in the drawing- 
room in ten minutes," was the regular 
warning I used to receive from a lady-in- 
waiting, fearful that I should be late and 
knowing the value the kaiser sets on 
punctuality. In point of fact, I never was 
late, and, indeed, punctuality almost ceases 
to be a virtue at the Schloss, where one 
lives under a rule as inexorable and as 
precise as that obtaining in a nunnery. 

On the way from the drawing-room to 
the dining-room the kaiser and kaiserin 
and their guests pass through the apart- 
ment in which the ladies and gentlemen in 
attendance have been discarded. They 
stand in a great circle, and it is the invari- 
able custom to make the tour of the circle 
with the usual smile and the usual banal 
remarks. That duty performed, the royal 
personages go into the dining-room and the 
suites retire to eat in another room. In 
Madrid the persons in attendance on the 
royal family dine with them. When I first 
went to Berlin the kaiser's children were 
young, and, although they lunched with 



THE KAISER AND HIS COURT 



11 



us, they were not permitted to speak unless 
first spoken to. After the meal the royal 
party returns to the drawing-room ; but it 
must not be thought that when alone royal 
persons unbend and behave naturally. 
The daily discipline of relentless etiquette 
has its effect on them ; they cannot forget 
that they are royal and therefore obliged to 
mask their feelings more rigorously than is 
necessary for ordinary people. Indeed, 
most princesses I know are reduced by this 
inexorable discipline to nonentities whose 
mouths are twisted in an eternal smile. At 
Berlin we conversed politely for the regu- 
lation time and, after making the circle of 
the suites again, were conducted back to 
our apartments in half a dozen processions. 

Back in one's rooms, it is impossible to 
emerge without a repetition of wearisome 
ceremonies. To go out for half an hour's 
walk by one's self is a relaxation the poor- 
est can enjoy; it is forbidden to a palace 
prisoner. The etiquette of Berlin requires 
a princess to be accompanied by a lady-in- 
waitintr. And usually the lady-in-waiting 
cannot w T alk fast, so that the enjoyment of 
a little vigorous exercise in the open air is 
impossible. Moreover, people about courts 
are usually uninteresting companions. 
Obviously, intelligent persons would not 
consent to lead such aimless lives and to 
conform to such an inexorable code. How 
inexorable is that code may be judged from 
the fact that one of the court ladies in 
Berlin was confined to her room for three 
days as a punishment for walking across 
the courtyard in an indecorous manner ; 
that is to say, with one hand ungloved. 

The Emperor William is an excellent 
host, and his personal kindness compen- 
sates in a great measure for the restraint of 
palace discipline. He studies his guests' 
wishes, finds out their whims, and does his 
best to gratify them. For instance, he 
knows that I like to begin the day with 
something more substantial than the coffee 
and rolls most Continentals take in the 
morning. Accordingly, whenever I have 
stayed at the Schloss he has himself given 
orders that an English breakfast should be 
served in my apartments, and I have al- 
ways been indulged with the eggs and 



bacon and marmalade I am accustomed to. 
At first sight it may seem a little odd that 
an emperor should be at the pains to ar- 
range the menu of a guest's breakfast. 
The kaiser evidently knows as well as I 
do that a princess in a palace is less happily 
situated than a visitor in an English coun- 
try house, who gives his orders and gets 
what he likes served in his room. It 
would never occur to me to ask for a 
boiled egg at breakfast in a palace where 
people are not accustomed to have boiled 
eggs for breakfast, because the order 
would pass through so many persons be- 
fore it reached the kitchen that my egg 
would probably be an omelette au surpris 
or a terrine of foie gras before it arrived in 
my dining-room. That a man immersed 
in affairs of state should trouble about any- 
thing so unimportant as a princess's break- 
fast is characteristic of the kaiser's con- 
sideration for those about him. His 
attention to details, which far less busy 
people would never find time to trouble 
about, is extraordinary. I once remarked 
to Count Eulenburg that the perfection 
with which every detail of life in the castle 
is managed astonished me, and I congratu- 
lated him on the success of his manage- 
ment. 

"I assure your royal Highness," he an- 
swered, "that all the credit is due to his 
Majesty, who looks after everything him- 
self." 

But above and beyond the kaiser's love 
of seeing that things work smoothly in his 
home is his love of his capital. To him 
Berlin is a daughter, whom he likes to 
see beautiful and well turned-out, just as 
he likes to see the kaiserin and the Duch- 
ess of Brunswick charmingly dressed. 

"It has been raining hard," he said, 
coming into my room one morning, "and 
it has just stopped. I want you to come 
out with me, because I have something 
interesting to show you." 

I put on my hat at once, and we went 
down to a carriage which was waiting, 
and drove away. I was w r ondering what 
sight I was going to see and what surprise 
the kaiser had in store for me. 

"Look," he cried suddenly — "look at 



12 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



the streets! There have been torrents of 
rain, and the weather cleared up only a 
few minutes ago ; but do you see that there 
is not a speck of mud on the road?" 

It was true. The streets were surpris- 
ingly and absolutely clean. 

"You appear to dry as well as to sweep 
them," I said. 

"I have an army of road-sweepers," he 
said. "Here they are," and he pointed to 
a group of men energetically plying their 
brooms. "I wanted you to see how clean 
I keep Berlin." 

"And is that all you have brought me 
out to see?" I said teasingly. 

"Yes, all," he said ; we both laughed. 

The kaiser knows that I am passion- 
ately fond of dancing, and he used to 
make a point of arranging small dances 
when I was at the castle, so that I could 
enjoy myself without the restraint imposed 
on royal personages at the formal court 
balls. They used to call these small dances 
les bals de VInfante. At court balls we 
walked round the circle of guests, — at all 
courts people seem eternally standing in 
smiling circles, — and the foreign ladies, 
penned behind their ambassadors, used to 
afford me considerable amusement, espe- 
cially the Americans, who used to appear 
in larger numbers than they do at present. 
There they stood in the glory of expen- 
sive court trains, which could be no possi- 
ble use to them afterward, and curtsied to 
the ground when the ambassadors had re- 
cited their names to each of us. I often 
wondered why they came and what plea- 
sure they could possibly derive from seeing 
us smile and from curtseying to us. Obvi- 
ously, sensible and representative women 
would not be among them unless, indeed, 
their husbands held official positions which 
necessitated their presence. After circling 
the circle, we went to the dais and sat for 
a few moments in gilt arm-chairs, facing 
the general company, before descending 
to dance the quadrille d'honneur. When 
that ceremony was ended, one's partner, a 
prince or an ambassador, handed one back 
to the dais, made a low bow, and retired. 
At courts etiquette does not allow a prin- 
cess to choose a partner because he happens 



to waltz well or to be amusing. At Ber- 
lin chamberlains had lists of partners for 
princesses, and one of them would bring 
me the card on which their names were in- 
scribed, just as a waiter brings one a bill 
of fare in a restaurant, and I gave my or- 
ders. Each partner came to the dais, 
made a very low bow, and, when the dance 
was over, consigned me to my golden arm- 
chair with another low bow. The kaiser 
has caused the minuet to be revived at his 
court, and when I watched that stately 
dance from the dais I used to feel certain 
that I was at the court of the Roi Soleil. 
But les bals de I'Infante were far more 
charming, for then I could dance with 
whom I liked and waltz to my heart's 
content. 

It was very good of the kaiser to ar- 
range them for me, and, indeed, he has al- 
ways shown me great consideration. "Ma- 
dame, vos desirs so/it des ordres pour Guil- 
lauine," he telegraphed to me once, and 
that was an answer to a letter I had sent, 
begging him to ask the Sultan Abdul- 
Hamid not to chop off the head of Izet 
Pasha, who was lying in prison under sen- 
tence of death. A Turkish lady, whom I 
knew in Paris, had been to see me and had 
begged me to ask the kaiser, who was 
about to visit Constantinople, to intercede 
with the sultan for the unfortunate man. 
I knew nothing about Izet Pasha, but my 
friend was so distressed and so confident 
that I would help her, that I was very 
much touched, and immediately wrote to 
the kaiser. The lady was overjoyed when 
I showed her the courtly reply I had re- 
ceived, and the sultan, of course, granted 
the kaiser's request. 

The matter did not end there. Two 
years later, when I had entirely forgotten 
it, I arrived one day in Madrid, and the 
instant I had got out of the train, the 
queen mother and my sister, the Infanta 
Isabella, who were waiting on the plat- 
form to receive me, began to question me 
about some mysterious Turk in whom they 
evidently supposed I was deeply interested. 
"Who is this Turk you have sent us, 
Eulalia?" asked the queen. 

"But I do not know any Turk." I said. 



THE KAISER AND HIS COURT 



13 



"But this Turk who has arrived in Ma- 
drid because you want to have him near 
you," said my sister. 

"What crazy nonsense!" I cried. "Are 
you both out of your minds?" 

"Certainly not," said the queen, "seeing 
that I have a letter from the sultan, say- 
ing that he has sent the man here as Turk- 
ish minister entirely to please you." 

Then the truth dawned on me. Abdul- 
Hamid must have asked the German em- 
peror why he desired the prisoner he had 
pleaded for to be pardoned, and the kaiser 
must have told him that it was the wish 
of the Infanta Eulalia. Mohammedan 
ideas of feminine psychology made the sul- 
tan see a tale of the Arabian Nights, and, 
determining to humor me to the top of 
my bent, he sent the hero of the imaginary 
romance to Madrid, where, as he ex- 
pressly stated in the letter the queen 
mother showed me at the palace, he hoped 
he would remain as permanent minister, 
to be for long years an ornament of the 
court of the Infanta Eulalia. 

The charm and grace with which the 
kaiser turned the reply I have already 
quoted to my letter about Izet Pasha 
seemed to me more Latin than Teutonic. 
And the truth is that, although the Em- 
peror William is a Teuton by birth, he 
has the Latin temperament. He is ex- 
traordinarily restless in private, and lacks 
the characteristic calmness of the imper- 
turbable and phlegmatic Teuton. He 
moves from chair to chair, or walks up 
and down the room, talking quickly and 
apparently incapable of being still. There 
is fire and vivacity, the quality the French 
call spiritualite, in his conversation, and I 
think he liked to talk to me because, despite 
my Spanish name and title, I am au fond 
French. One memorable day he took me 
to the old palace of Sans-Souci at Potsdam 
to show me the apartments of Frederick 
the Great and the relics of the king's 
friend, Voltaire, which are preserved 
there. We went into Frederick's library 
and when the door was closed, I found 
myself in a circle of book-shelves from 
which there seemed no exit. And all the 
books were French. The kaiser smiled. 



"Here you are again in your dear 
France," he said. 

"Yes," I answered, "I am very proud 
of my French ancestry, and you yourself 
are very proud to let me see that Frederick 
lived in a French atmosphere and to show 
me all these French books with which he 
surrounded himself." 

The emperor laughed ; but his eyes spar- 
kled, and I saw that I was right. French 
art, literature, and the stage, all appeal to 
him as they did to his great ancestor. 

But however great the Emperor Wil- 
liam's admiration for French culture may 
be, there is no sovereign who loves his 
country and its institutions more than he 
does and no monarch who works with 
greater energy and persistence to further 
the interests of his subjects and to secure 
their welfare. We have discussed a thou- 
sand things together, but above all I like 
to hear him talk about the progress of 
modern Germany. His face lights up 
when he speaks of the increase of German 
commerce and of German influence, and 
his expression and the tone of his voice 
make it evident that he is speaking of the 
subject that is nearest his heart. And 
when he mentions his army or his navy, 
his steel-blue eyes shine. 

His enthusiasm for Germany has often 
caused him to be misunderstood. I should 
like those who misjudge him to see him, as 
I have seen him, singing psalms. To do 
so is to realize that he is a mystic. The 
intensity of his faith and his power of see- 
ing into a supernatural world, hidden from 
most, is indeed his most striking charac- 
teristic. I have naturally never attended 
service in the chapel of the castle, but at 
those ceremonies of the court in which 
prayers and the singing of psalms formed a 
part I have seen how real worship is to the 
kaiser and his power of throwing aside the 
cares of the moment to be completely 
absorbed in contemplation of the Creator. 
It became clear to me that he felt himself 
caught up into the life of the divinity, just 
as did our Santa Teresa. He feels himself 
to be the exponent of the divine will to 
the German people and, when he claims 
to rule of divine right, he is sincere. 



The Scandinavian Democracies 



1AM so glad that I am queen of a 
country in which everybody loves sim- 
plicity." 

This was the testimony to the charm of 
Norway which Queen Maud gave me 
when I saw her in her little home near 
Christiania last autumn. She spoke with 
enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I 
was not in the least surprised, for Norway 
is undoubtedly the happiest and most pro- 
gressive country in Europe. Indeed, if 
anybody wants to know what life will be 
like in the good time that is coming when 
capitalism will be dead and democracy 
triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic, 
let him go to Norway and study its insti- 
tutions and the life of its people. 

"When I am at Lourdes," said a de- 
vout Catholic, "I do not believe; I know." 
And when I was in Norway, I did not 
need to make an act of faith in democ- 
racy, as I must in Paris or New York or 
London ; I saw for myself that a nation is 
happier when its. life is based on demo- 
cratic principles. 

"How deadly dull!" said a fashionable 
woman to me when I told her of the sim- 
plicity of life in Christiania. "Surely your 
royal Highness does not want to eliminate 
the color and brilliancy of life!" 

She had never realized that the glitter 
and magnificence of society in great capi- 
tals can exist only against a background of 
misery and starvation. Norway is not a 
wealthy country and it does not afford 
capitalists opportunities for piling up for- 
tunes. Nobody is very rich, and every- 
body appears to have a sufficiency. The 
cosmopolitan plutocrats, who corrupt the 
society of Western Europe, would be 
wretched there and, in point of fact, they 
avoid a country in which they are perfectly 
well aware they would be unable to dis- 
play their wealth. And if the citizens of 
Christiania are deprived of the sight of 
millionaires darting about the town in il- 
luminated motor-cars, with jeweled wives 

n 



and daughters, they are compensated for 
the loss by the knowledge that, thanks to 
the equitable distribution of such wealth 
as the country possesses, crime and robbery 
are virtually unknown. Education and 
common sense have broken down the bar- 
riers of pride of purse and pride of rank, 
which separate man and man in other 
countries, and the king himself is simply 
the first among equals. 

When the Norwegian people deter- 
mined that the industrial and commercial 
life of the country should no longer be 
hampered by Sweden, and declared their 
independence, they placed a king at the 
head of the state. They were clever 
enough to see that the country would 
have more prestige in the eyes of Europe 
as a monarchy than as a republic, and 
they were wise enough to give the king no 
power. Possibly they thought that a 
prince who, if the expression be allowed 
me, was born to the business would make 
a more effective figurehead than a com- 
moner, and they might have considered 
that the peaceful succession of hereditary 
monarchs is less agitating to the nerves 
of the nation than recurring presidential 
elections. However this may be, their 
king is to them what their flag is — a sym- 
bol of national unity. Both are saluted 
with respect, but neither one nor the other 
is invested with power. 

King Haakon's fine figure and hand- 
some face make him look the part he has 
to play. He is a man of great tact and 
kindliness, and has the simple tastes char- 
acteristic of the Danish royal family. To 
these advantages the king adds the su- 
preme one of having a clever queen, who 
helps him wisely and loyally in his work. 
Their son, little Prince Olaf, is utterly 
charming and, despite being an only child, 
not the least spoiled. 

I had not seen Queen Maud in her 
kingdom until I went to Norway last au- 
tumn, and I wondered whether her rise 



THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 



15 



from the rank of a mere royal Highness to 
that of a Majesty would have altered or 
spoiled her. She was staying at a little 
chateau near Christiania when I arrived 
in the city, and she asked me to come out 
and have luncheon with her. When a 
royal carriage arrived at my hotel to take 
me to the country, and I noticed that the 
servants wore plain, dark liveries instead 
of the regal scarlet, I began to feel that 
the charming Maud had not changed. 
Half-an-hour's drive brought me to the 
chateau, and as the queen welcomed me, 
I felt ashamed of the suspicions I had en- 
tertained, and realized that she remains 
the same simple and unaffected girl I used 
to know in England. 

"I 'm so glad you 've come," she said, 
and as she spoke I heard in her voice and 
saw in her manner the charm she has in- 
herited from her mother, Queen Alexan- 
dra. 

The chateau was a small house of one 
story, standing in a public park. A plot 
of ground has been railed off round the 
house, so that the king and queen may 
have a garden in which they can enjoy 
privacy. Not that they are annoyed, like 
most kings and queens, with demonstra- 
tive manifestations of loyalty. The Nor- 
wegians contrive to make life agreeable for 
the royal family by allowing them to go 
about the countryside or through the 
streets of the capital as freely as ordinary 
citizens. Queen Maud revels in her new 
liberty. 

"I find it so nice to be able to go out 
shopping without any fuss," she said, and 
told me that she could go into a shop in 
Christiania without anybody taking any no- 
tice of her, buy what she wants, and leave, 
with her parcels tucked under her arm, to 
walk back to the palace. 

I could understand her delight better 
than most people, for in Madrid I have 
experienced the misery of knowing that I 
cannot get in or out of a carriage without 
attracting a small crowd. To find oneself 
perpetually a public show is beyond words 
exasperating. 

Queen Maud's court consists of two 
ladies-in-waiting and a grand mistress, a 



suite which is no larger than that of the 
least important of the numerous Austrian 
archduchesses. Moreover, these ladies do 
not make deferential curtsies to her Maj- 
esty. The queen shakes hands with them 
when she meets them, and treats them not 
as glorified servants, but as friends. The 
point may appear trivial, but it is worth 
mentioning, for it shows with what tact 
a princess, accustomed to the etiquette and 
the splendor of the English court, has 
adapted herself to the spirit of a demo- 
cratic people. 

"You were perfectly right," she said to 
me, "in what you used to tell me about 
the happiness of simplicity." 

"Of course I was right," I said, "and I 
do not believe you would care to go back 
to the old court life." 

"I am much happier in this life," she 
said, and then it was that she told me how 
glad she was to be queen of a country in 
which everybody loves simplicity. 

It was obvious to me that both the king 
and queen adore the fascinating little 
Olaf, but I noticed that he has been very 
well brought up and is very obedient. He 
is being educated with Norwegian boys 
of his own age and leads a healthy out-of- 
door life. 

"I want you to see Olaf driving the 
motor-car his grandmother has sent him," 
said the queen; and Queen Alexandra's 
present, the tiniest and most dainty little 
car imaginable, was brought round to the 
door of the chateau. The little prince 
made a splendid chauffeur, and evidently 
thoroughly enjoyed rushing round the 
park in his car. 

I left the chateau feeling that I had had 
a glimpse of ideal family life, and thor- 
oughly convinced that the democratic 
Norwegian court is the nicest in Europe. 

I do not in the least mind confessing 
that when I advocate democratic princi- 
ples I have the interests of royal person- 
ages at heart as well as those of their peo- 
ples. There are plenty of princes and 
princesses, bound hand and foot by eti- 
quette and galling restrictions, who, what- 
ever their present views may be, will wel- 
come the liberty democracy will bring 



16 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



them. Happy King Haakon and Queen 
Maud ! Although they are addressed as 
your Majesties, they are allowed to live in 
a tiny red bungalow, up in the mountains 
at Holm Kelm, when winter comes, and 
there they and Prince Olaf dart about on 
skis, talking to everybody, making every 
one happy, happy themselves in being 
three Norwegian citizens. 

And beyond the circle of the court the 
constitution of Norwegian society is ut- 
terly different to that of society in the 
most powerful European countries. Both 
the law and society regard woman as in 
every respect the equal of man. Women 
have the same civic rights as men, and use 
them. At the last parliamentary elections, 
in 191 3, seventy-five per cent, of the wo- 
men of the towns who had the right to 
vote used it; indeed, the proportion of 
women who did their duty as citizens and 
recorded their votes was higher than that 
of men. All the higher professions are 
open to women, and at the present time 
the most important of the professors at 
the university is a woman, and the leading 
lawyer connected with the supreme tribu- 
nal is also a woman. The Norwegians 
refuse to tolerate cheap female labor ; if a 
woman does the same work as a man, she 
gets the same pay. Society is equally just. 
It does not apply one standard of morals 
to man and another to woman. Both are 
judged by the same standard, and a girl 
does not lose her position in society for 
conduct which in other countries is blamed 
in a woman and condoned in a man. Some 
Norwegian couples prefer to contract free 
unions instead of legal marriages, and, 
now that the influence of Lutheranism on 
the life of the country is virtually dead, so- 
ciety does not look at such unions askance. 
Married and unmarried couples live in 
peace and associate freely. In a country 
where everybody works there is little time 
or opportunity for the development of 
crimes passionels, so, if a couple finds that 
they have made a mistake and that life in 
common is too difficult, they just part 
without quarreling, and build up their 
lives anew. 

The happy relations existing between 



the men and women of Norway are, I am 
convinced, largely due to the fact that 
they are educated together at school and 
in the university. The equality of male 
and female students at the university 
seems to be symbolized by the wearing of 
identical caps of the same gay colors. 
From childhood they grow up together 
and become good comrades, understand- 
ing each other thoroughly and without 
arriere pensee, having the same moral code 
and the same views of life. In most coun- 
tries boys and girls are segregated apart, 
and allowed to meet only under the super- 
vision of their elders. The system is not 
a good one. Indeed, I have often thought 
that nothing gives a girl's brain such a 
wrong twist as the false view given her at 
school about the companionship of men. 
Why perpetually dread man and see in 
him only the seducer? By doing so I be- 
lieve you very often awake in him instincts 
that might otherwise lie dormant. 

And the education the girls and boys 
receive together is an excellent one. Nor- 
wegians understand the importance of ac- 
quiring foreign languages, which they 
require in commerce and for dealing with 
the numerous foreign tourists who make 
their beautiful fiords and mountains a 
holiday playground. Hence both English 
and German are taught in all the schools, 
and the instruction given is so good that 
the children actually learn to converse in 
these languages. More than once I was 
astonished to find that a cabman could an- 
swer me in English or German. 

The Norwegians are a vigorous and 
hardy race. In their veins flows the blood 
of vikings, and they are determined that 
the nation shall not deteriorate physically. 
With this end in view the law provides for 
the protection of the mother during her 
time of expectation and for her support 
and comfort during the six weeks follow- 
ing the birth of her child. Moreover, 
careful provision is made for the upbring- 
ing of children born outside wedlock, and 
neither father nor mother is allowed to 
shirk the responsibility of parentage. 

The separation of Norway and Sweden 
was due to the desire of the Norwegians, 



THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 



17 



whose merchant fleet is twice the size of 
the Swedish, to have their commercial in- 
terests abroad properly looked after by an 
independent consular service. This was 
the formal cause of separation, but un- 
doubtedly the marked difference between 
the social organization of the two coun- 
tries facilitated the unloosing of the bonds 
that held them together. Sweden still has 
an aristocracy, and the nobles who sit in 
the Upper House of the Swedish parlia- 
ment are able to check in some degree the 
advance of democracy. Yet in their love 
of simplicity the two nations are alike. 
This was made clear to me in rather an 
amusing way soon after my arrival in 
Stockholm during my autumn tour. I was 
going to the theater with a friend, and 
when she arrived to fetch me, I was get- 
ting into an evening gown. 

"Is your royal Highness going to wear 
a low dress?" she said in a manner that 
made me feel I was doing something thor- 
oughly unconventional. 

"Ought n't I to?" I asked. 

"We do not go in evening dress to the 
theater," she said. 

"Then what am I to wear?" I asked. 

"Just a skirt and blouse," she said. 

And accordingly in a skirt and blouse I 
went. It was rather a pretty blouse, — I 
confess that I love pretty things, — and 
when I got into the theater I felt just a 
trifle overdressed. 

"What sensible people you Swedish wo- 
men are!" I said to my friend when I 
looked round the theater and saw how 
simply the women were dressed. "You 
save hours and hours which women in 
London and Paris fritter away at their 
toilet-tables." 

In point of fact, the Swedish woman 
has not usually either the time or money 
required to turn herself into a woman of 
fashion. And even if she had, she is too 
sensible to make her appearance the absorb- 
ing care of life. Careers which are closed 
to women in other lands are open to her, 
and she prefers to be independent and to 
earn her living. At the present time the 
Swedish women have not been granted 
electoral rights, but there can be no doubt 



that they will obtain the same right as 
men in the course of time. The Conser- 
vative party in the Upper House shrinks 
from yielding to the demands of the wo- 
men, fearing that their votes will 
strengthen the Socialists in the Lower 
House. But the nobles are certain to do 
justice to women sooner or later, and at 
the present time there is only a majority 
of twelve in the Upper House against the 
granting of the suffrage to women. 

As it is, that Upper House puts too 
strong a brake on the wheels of progress. 
At one Swedish railway-station I saw a 
number of emigrants who were starting 
for America. They did not display the 
least sorrow at leaving their native land ; 
on the contrary, they were bearing wreaths 
of flowers and singing joyfully, as if they 
were onlv too thankful to get away from 
Sweden. It was a sad and eloquent tes- 
timony to the evils that still mar the social 
structure of Sweden. Indeed, the stream 
of emigrants who cross the Atlantic to 
enrich the life of America with their work 
is so great and so constant that a royal 
commission has been endeavoring to find 
out its causes. In their report the com- 
missioners state that the principal cause of 
emigration is the failure of the Govern- 
ment to accelerate legislation for the im- 
provement of the conditions of the work- 
ing-classes. In the circumstances, it is 
only natural that there should be a power- 
ful Socialist party in the country. The 
crown prince is clever enough to see that 
this party is one which will increase in 
power with the lapse of time, but his ef- 
forts to establish friendly relations with 
its leaders have not been well received. He 
talks good-humoredly and shakes hands 
with prominent Socialists, but the party 
appears to see in these little attentions 
nothing more than a symptom of the fu- 
ture king's fear of the rising power of the 
working-classes. 

The court of Sweden is, however, 
characterized by Scandinavian simplicity, 
although this is naturally not so strongly 
marked as at the ideal court of King Haa- 
kon and Queen Maud. The Queen of 
Sweden's health is too bad to allow her to 



18 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



appear in public, and her mother-in-law, 
Queen Sophie, lives in a retirement dic- 
tated by her advanced age and personal 
tastes. Hence the principal figure at court, 
apart from the king, is the crown princess, 
before her marriage Princess Margaret of 
Connaught, and she has contrived to give 
to it just a touch of the elegance of the 
Court of St. James. I lunched with her 
when I was in Stockholm, and she told me 
how much she loves her Swedish life. Her 
marriage is a very happy one and in strik- 
ing contrast to that of Prince William, 
whose Russian wife has deserted him to 
amuse herself in Paris. An attempt has 
been most unjustly made to place the 
blame for this escapade on the prince. As 
a matter of fact, he is a charming boy, and 
did his utmost to make his wife happy in 
Sweden. King Gustav has inherited from 
his father a great charm of manner and a 
fine figure, which devotion to tennis helps 
him to keep. He is fond of all sorts of 
sport and is an excellent shot. 

I used to see a good deal of the late 
King Oscar. His French ancestry and 
his personal charm made him very popular 
in France, a country he loved, and during 
his numerous visits to Paris I had the op- 
portunity of getting to know him well, 
and I became very fond of him. I was in 
Sweden in 1897, traveling incognito, and 
I remember sitting down to rest one day 
within sight of Sophie Rue, King Oscar's 
Norman villa, and, as I looked at the 
peaceful home of my old friend, I hoped 
that his last years would not be embittered 
by the dissolution of the union between 
Sweden and Norway. But the blow came 
to the "poet king," whose spirit seemed to 
live above the dull realities of life, and it 
came when he was old and broken down 
with the illness which at last caused his 
death. Kings must yield to the imperious 
will of democracy, and I look forward to 
the time when Sweden will have the ad- 
vantages enjoyed by the sister kingdom. 

I visited Denmark as well as Norway 
and Sweden last autumn, and there also I 
remarked the growth of democratic ideas. 
It is a restful country, and the souls of 
the people seem as clear as their blue eyes. 



The Danes are a kind, industrious, and 
simple race, and if they strike one as being 
less hardy and vigorous than the other 
Scandinavian races, they certainly have the 
same courteous manners as the Swedes and 
Norwegians. 

The first time that I visited Denmark, 
King Christian, the father of Queen 
Alexandra and the Empress Marie, was 
reigning, and the castle, in which his large 
family used to assemble for those reunions 
which he loved, was looked on by the 
Danes with a sort of reverence. But I 
remember that once, when I was traveling 
incognito, I drove past the castle in a cab, 
and the friendly driver, anxious to oblige 
a tourist, told me that a great family gath- 
ering was taking place there. He reeled off 
the names of the world-famous personages 
who had gathered round the king, and he 
did so with as much indifference as a Lon- 
don cabman displayed when he pointed out 
Madame Tussaud's to me the first time I 
was in London, and casually explained 
that wax figures were kept there. The 
attitude of the Danish cabman towards the 
royal family, which seemed to me curious 
years ago, appears to be that of most 
Danes at the present time. They have 
ceased to take any particular interest in the 
doings of their sovereign and his relatives. 
Nothing strikes me more, as I go about 
Europe, than the fact that, if I may be 
allowed the expression, the market value 
of princes and princesses has enormously 
decreased. 

I went to an hotel in Copenhagen, and 
I had not been long in the capital before a 
card, inscribed with a single Danish word, 
was brought to me. I stared at it, not 
recognizing the name, and wondering who 
it was who had been to see me. Then it 
suddenly dawned on me that the word on 
the card was simply the Danish for queen. 
Her Majesty had been to see me, and of 
course I went to see her. 

The royal family appears now to live in 
retirement, and its members form a small 
caste, penned off from the rest of mankind 
by their rank. Their chief amusement 
seems to be paying calls on one another. 
Most of them live at their countrv villas 



THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 



19 



and chateaux, and in these pleasant homes 
there is a constant succession of cousinly 
meetings, when family news is exchanged, 
and, while the children play, the elders 
take a stroll in the park surrounding the 
house at which the family gathering is 
taking place. The king displays that pe- 
culiar form of wit which I have often 
noticed is characteristic of crowned heads 
who have lived much in retirement. With 
them the gaiety of childhood seems, with 
the passing of the years, to turn into a 
curious spirit of mockery. Trifles create 
shouts of laughter, enlivening the family 
circle and confusing those who are unac- 
quainted with the type of witticisms 
which goes down in royal circles. 

Beyond the tranquil inclosures of the 
royal parks the Danish people is moving 
surely and steadily toward a broader and 
more democratic life than it has hitherto 
enjoyed. And women are in the fore- 
front of the movement. The Danish wo- 
men are perhaps the most fascinating of 
the women of Scandinavia. Many of them 
are beautiful, and although they refuse to 
be slaves of fashion, they display a certain 
charming coquetry in their dress. Num- 
bers of them earn their own living, and 
are thus independent of men. This is the 
sure road for women to take if they de- 
sire to have the same rights and privileges 
as men. As it is, the Danish woman has 
established for herself a position which her 
Latin sisters may well envy, and the law 
secures her independence. She will, I am 
convinced, be given electoral rights, and 
she will have no need to resort to militant 
methods to obtain them. 

On the road between Copenhagen and 
Helsingfors a milk-white villa stands out 
against the faint-blue background of the 
Northern sky. There it was that I passed 
the happiest moments of my stay in Den- 
mark, and there I found at last two 
crowned heads who have remained human 
despite the crushing weight of the crowns 
they have worn for many years. The 
Italian villa is the home of Queen Alex- 
andra and the Empress Marie, and the 
two sisters, who adore each other, are ab- 
solutely happy in each other's society and 



in the simplicity of the life they lead. 
They welcomed me with enthusiasm, 
kissed me, and were quite excited to have 
somebody to whom they could show their 
little house. In the sitting-room they 
share they both wanted to show me their 
special corners at the same time. 

"Come and see my writing-table," said 
the empress, pulling me to her end of the 
room. 

"No," cried Queen Alexandra, gaily, 
pulling me in the opposite direction, 
"come and see my writing-table." 

How we all laughed ! 

"This is my chair," said the empress, 
showing me one in her corner of the room. 

"And this is my chair," echoed the 
queen, calling my attention to the favorite 
chair in her corner. 

I had to see everything and admire 
everything. The two sisters seemed par- 
ticularly proud of their kitchen garden and 
seemed to be delighted to find that I knew 
something about growing vegetables. I 
have a kitchen garden of my own in Nor- 
mandy, where I have a little house, and 
we were able to compare notes. 

And after we had inspected flowers and 
vegetables, we went through an under- 
ground passage which their Majesties 
have had cut beneath the road that divides 
the garden of the villa from the sea, and 
I found myself in a little Norwegian cot- 
tage by the sea-shore, a tiny stretch of 
which has been walled off, so that the em- 
press and the queen may enjoy it undis- 
turbed. When we were inside the cot- 
tage, the empress offered me a thin Rus- 
sian cigarette, and lit one herself. Then 
Queen Alexandra showed me their tea- 
kettle, and the little kitchen in which they 
make their own cakes and brew their tea. 

"This is where I make my tea," cried 
the queen. 

"And this is where I cut the bread and 
butter," said the empress. 

They were as happy as two school-girls, 
reveling in the simple life of a home where 
they can live like two ordinary women, 
untrammeled by court etiquette and with- 
out even a single lady-in-waiting to at- 
tend them. 



20 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



After visiting the Norwegian cottage I 
had to see a new marvel. We went down 
to the beach, and the two sisters explained 
to me that it was a splendid place for 
picking up bits of amber. I had seen so 
much amber in the Castle of Rosenberg 
and in the shops of Copenhagen that it 
seemed improbable that there could be any 
more in the Baltic. Nevertheless there 
appears to be plenty left, for both the em- 
press and the queen showed me the boxes 
in which they store the treasure they find 
on the shore. The empress is luckier in 
finding amber than the queen, and her box 
contained more than her sister's. 

"It is most unfair," said the queen, gaily. 

"I always pick up more than you do," 
said the empress, triumphantly. 

We searched for amber until it was 



time for me to go, and we enjoyed our- 
selves like children. 

Both the empress and the queen have 
played the great parts they have had to 
fill on the stage of life with dignity and 
distinction ; but they are Danes, and they 
have never lost the love of simplicity 
which is the most notable characteristic of 
the peoples of Scandinavia. Now that 
they can live their lives as they like, they 
deliberately leave their palaces and spend 
a great part of their time more simply 
than many commoners. To see their hap- 
piness made, me happier myself, and, in- 
deed, my tour in Scandinavia has given 
me new courage. All that I saw and heard 
made me feel that the time will come 
when democracy will make many of the 
crooked things of this life straight. 



The Czar and His People 



IT was mid-winter when I arrived for 
the first time in St. Petersburg, mag- 
ical beneath its snow mantle, and I came 
as a simple tourist to see the country and 
to study the conditions of Russian life. I 
established myself in a hotel as a Spanish 
countess, feeling delighted that nobody 
knew who I actually was and reveling in 
the freedom of strict incognito. But I 
had not been in the hotel five hours before 
a grand master of ceremonies arrived and 
betrayed my secret. From that minute 
everybody knew that the countess was an 
infanta of Spain, and my liberty was gone. 
It is my usual experience. I arrive some- 
where, believing that not a soul knows 
where I am, and, almost before I have 
taken possession of my rooms, there is a 
whir of the telephone bell, and somebody 
at the other end saying: "Eulalia, how did 
you get here? You must come and see us 
at once." 

The grand master of ceremonies 
brought me a message from the emperor 
and empress, telling me how delighted they 
were to know that they were going to see 
me soon, and suggesting that I should 
come to the Winter Palace the next morn- 
ing for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the 
Blessing of the Waters. 

"But I have nothing to wear!" I cried. 

It was absolutely true. I had never ex- 
pected to figure at a court ceremony, and 
it had not occurred to me to bring a man- 
teau tie tour. Etiquette, however, is less 
severe in Russia than in Spain or in Prus- 
sia, as I soon discovered, and the next 
morning I put on my smartest frock and 
drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic 
building, painted dull red, with rows of 
gods and goddesses standing on the cornice 
of- its stupendous facade, looking cold and 
unhappy in the nipping air. 

I had not seen the empress since we 
were girls, staying with Queen Victoria at 
Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. 
And what a charming girl she was! A 



simple English girl, despite her German 
title, in a skirt and blouse, utterly unaf- 
fected, warm-hearted, and as fresh as a 
rosebud touched with dew. I was think- 
ing of the happy, careless days when we 
were in England together as I drove to the 
palace, forgetting the change that the pas- 
sage of the years makes in the friends of 
one's youth, and when I went into the 
room where the empress was waiting to 
watch the Blessing of the Waters from the 
window, I felt startled to find, instead of 
the girl I used to know, a surpassingly 
beautiful and stately woman. The petals 
of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the 
center of a brilliant group of grand 
duchesses and ladies, all wearing the 
stranee, but beautiful, dress of the Russian 
court, with long hanging sleeves. On her 
head was a kokoshnik, a crescent-shaped 
diadem, flaming with diamonds, from 
which fell a long white veil, and her state- 
liness and beauty distinguished her from 
all the other sumptuous figures surround- 
ing her. A stranger who had never seen 
her before would have been certain that it 
was she, and not one of the others, who 
was empress. 

"How good to see you again, Eulalia, 
after all these years!" she said, coming to- 
ward me; and she put her arms round me 
and kissed me. 

And in that greeting I realized that the 
czarina had not changed. She was still 
the affectionate and unaffected friend I 
had known years before. We had a hun- 
dred questions to ask each other, but al- 
most before we had had time to begin, we 
had to stop talking to attend to the impos- 
ing ceremony which was beginning on the 
frozen Neva. 

From the window I saw that a pavilion, 
like an exceedingly decorative band-stand, 
had been erected on the ice just in front of 
the palace, and I watched a procession of 
ecclesiastics in stiff Byzantine robes and 
glittering miters move slowly across the 



22 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



road separating it from the palace, fol- 
lowed by the grand dukes and the em- 
peror. The singing of the choir floated to 
us through the frosty air, and the empress 
crossed herself devoutly. She is a sincerely 
religious woman. 

I watched the emperor standing motion- 
less beneath the fretted and gilded canopy 
of the pavilion, and the thought suddenly 
flashed into my mind that the Russian em- 
perors alone claim the right to govern the 
souls as well as the bodies of their subjects. 
The autocrat is a great ecclesiastical per- 
sonage as well as a secular ruler, and the 
Russian Church depends upon him and 
can do nothing without his consent. I 
remembered that banishment to Siberia 
was the punishment for those who deserted 
the orthodox church and refused to believe 
as the czar believes and to pray as the czar 
prays. The kings of Spain and the em- 
perors of Austria are sons, not rulers, of 
the church, and I had been taught that the 
pope was king of kings. It seemed to me 
that no worse form of despotism could be 
conceived than the concentration in the 
hands of an autocratic ruler of the spii 
itual and temporal power, and as these 
thoughts crowded into my mind, there 
seemed to me something sinister and ter- 
rible in the ceremony I was watching, and 
I realized, as I had never done before, the 
immensity and the awfulness of the power ' 
wielded by the motionless figure beneath 
the gay pavilion. Nobody rejoiced more 
than I did when the emperor published the 
Manifesto of April, 1905, granting his 
subjects religious liberty, and I realized 
that the stupendous claim which had made 
me shudder when I thought of it, as I 
watched the sumptuous Twelfth Day 
ceremony from the windows of the Win- 
ter Palace, had been renounced forever. 
In point of fact, Nicholas II had no desire 
to maintain it, and he renounced it as soon 
as an appropriate occasion arose. 

After the picturesque ceremony which 
had stirred these thoughts had ended, and 
the archbishop had dipped a golden cross 
in the water running below the ice of the 
river, the holy water was brought mto the 
palace to the empress, and the emperor 



joined us. He gave me a characteristically 
Russian welcome. His manner was en- 
gagingly simple and unaffected. The con- 
trast between him and the German 
emperor was extraordinary. The kaiser, 
a constitutional monarch whose power is 
strictly limited, shows by his bearing and 
his manner, as I have indicated elsewhere, 
that he holds the divine right of kings to 
be a cardinal article of faith. When one is 
with the czar, it requires a certain effort 
of the imagination to remember that he 
possesses autocratic power over the lives 
of 160,000,000 human beings. The Rus- 
sians are the most hospitable people in the 
world, and the emperor and empress are 
not excelled by any of their subjects in 
kindness and generosity to guests. They 
both insisted that as long as I remained in 
St. Petersburg I must be with them as 
much as possible and, in point of fact, al- 
though I slept at the hotel, I was con- 
stantly at the Winter Palace and had my 
part in the intimate family life of the 
imperial family. 

When a man likes nothing better than 
to remain at home with his wife, it is a 
sure sign that he is very much in love with 
her. Judged by that test, there is no hap- 
pier couple in Europe than the emperor 
and the empress of Russia. They are 
never more contented than when together, 
and it was obvious to me that the czar 
simply adores his wife. It would be 
strange if he did not, for there is not a 
gentler or sweeter woman in the world 
than the beautiful czarina. And both of 
them are devoted to their children. They 
used to make me come with them some- 
times to the nursery, where the little grand 
duchesses used to welcome us with shrieks 
of delight. What games there were! Peo- 
ple who think of the czar as a trowning 
despot would have been astonished to see 
a vigorous pillow-fight going on between 
him and his children. And away from the 
formalities of the court, closeted with her 
children, the czarina was always radiant 
and happy. Under the spell of their prat- 
tle and of their caresses she was trans- 
formed. The smiling mother seemed a 
different woman to the beautiful, but 



THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE 



23 



grave, lady seen by the public in the 
ceremonies of the court. 

"Do try and get the empress to smile, 
Eulalia," said one of the grand duchesses 
to me at some court function. 

But that was sooner said than done. 
There is not a trace of artificiality in the 
empress's character. She seemed unable to 
pretend she was enjoying herself when, in 
point of fact, she was fatigued and bored. 
Moving as the central figure of a splendid 
pageant, I think she was always wishing 
the ceremony to be at an end and to find 
herself free to be with her children again. 

The tastes of the emperor are as simple 
as the empress's and in curious contrast to 
those of most of the members of the im- 
perial family. Neither of them like the 
late supper-parties which most of their 
relatives indulge in. Early to bed and 
early to rise is my motto, and supper-parties 
hardly finished at two o'clock in the morn- 
ing bored me unutterably. When I went 
to the opera with the emperor and em- 
press, we used to take time by the forelock 
and sup in the second entr'acte, in order to 
be able to go straight to bed when we got 
home. The ballets given at the Marinsky 
Theater were exceedingly beautiful, and 
the empress followed the movements of the 
dancers with evident enjoyment from the 
stage box. Behind the box is a charming 
room, and there it was that supper used to 
be served. 

"Here is your high tea, Eulalia," the 
empress would say merrily, and then we 
sat down to a square meal of cold meat 
and countless cups of tea, to which I used 
to do ample justice, as I did not dine be- 
fore going to the theater. 

His love of simplicity does not, however, 
prevent the emperor from enjoying society. 
Like most Russians, he is fond of it, and 
his animation and vivacity at court balls 
was delightful and, moreover, genuine. I 
liked to watch him dance the mazurka, 
that rushing, almost violent, dance that 
they say only a Slav can dance to perfec- 
tion. It was obvious that he enjoyed it. 
When supper was served, we went to a 
long table on a dais, set at one end of a 
great hall, and I discovered that the Rus- 



sian court has a very charming custom 
which does not obtain elsewhere. The 
emperor and empress took their places, 
facing the general company, with their 
royal guests and other members of the 
imperial family to right and to left of 
them ; but we had hardly been a minute at 
table before the emperor rose and went to 
one of the tables below the dais, where he 
sat down and chatted with the people sup- 
ping at it. After talking for five minutes, 
he went to another table to greet other 
guests, and then passed from group to 
group, sitting down at each table for a 
few minutes. And with the Russian in- 
stinct of hospitality, the emperor played 
the part of host so well that the conversa- 
tion became more animated at each table 
he visited. The presence of some sover- 
eigns, too careful of preserving the dis- 
tance between themselves and persons who 
are not of the blood royal, sometimes casts 
a gloom on their guests. 

Perhaps the emperor's obvious enjoy- 
ment of a ball was due to the fact that it is 
but seldom that he can allow himself 
relaxation. There is not a busier man in 
the world. I once remarked to him that I 
find it impossible to get through the work 
of the day unless I follow a definite rule, 
and I asked him how he divided up his 
time. 

"I get up early," he answered, "and 
after a light breakfast I work until eleven. 
Then I take a walk and come back for 
luncheon at half-past twelve. After that 
comes the task of giving audiences to min- 
isters and others and, when work allows 
it, I take a drive before tea in order to 
get some fresh air. Immediately after tea 
I am busy again with my secretaries, and 
work with them lasts until dinner-time." 

"A strenuous day," I said. 

"But that is not the end of it," he an- 
swered, smiling. "I am very often obliged 
to go back to work straight from the din- 
ner-table, and sometimes it is not finished 
until far on into the night." 

The emperor's devotion to duty is in 
striking contrast to the almost traditional 
love of pleasure displayed by the grand 
dukes. A foreigner might easily be led 



24 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



to suppose that the house of Romanoff is 
at heart in sympathy with democratic 
ideas. The lack of formality at court, the 
marriages between grand dukes and com- 
moners, the presence of unlettered peas- 
ants at certain of the ceremonies of the 
Winter Palace, the share taken by some of 
the members of the imperial family in 
amusements accessible to anybody who has 
money in his pocket, their supper-parties 
in restaurants, and their enjoyment of the 
cafe concerts of the capital — all these 
things might deceive the stranger. To 
know the grand dukes and grand duch- 
esses is to realize that they neither under- 
stand the aspirations of the democracy nor 
sympathize with them, for, reflecting the 
glory of autocracy, they are more firmly 
convinced than any other royal persons in 
Europe that a gulf divides them from the 
rest of mankind. And this conviction is 
so deep that they appear to believe that 
the most ordinary actions are ennobled by 
the mere fact that they are performed by 
persons in whose veins flows the imperial 
blood. The life led by most of them 
would be unbearable to me. A perpetual 
round of amusements becomes in the end 
as wearisome as the tread-mill. How peo- 
ple who are not in the first flush of youth 
can day after day sit up until two o'clock 
in the morning, as too many of them do, 
eating unnecessary suppers and drinking 
champagne, I cannot understand. High 
tea with the emperor and empress pleased 
me better than late suppers with the grand 
dukes and grand duchesses. Indeed, when 
I yielded to persuasion and went out with 
them for an evening's amusement, my 
sleepiness used to divert them immensely. 

"Eulalia, you 're yawning," they would 
say. 

"It is two hours past my bedtime," I 
would answer. 

And then we laughed, and it was prob- 
ably the Grand Duke Alexis who would 
suggest that we should all drive out to 
the islands and have another supper at a 
cafe concert. Then I would strike and 
go home, scolding myself for sitting up so 
late and marveling at the extraordinary 
vitality of the rest of the company, start- 



ing merrily on the long sledge drtve to the 
islands, where they would sit by the hour 
in a private room overlooking the little 
stage on which the unsuccessful artistes of 
Paris danced and sang. 

Perhaps it is because I am Spanish and 
not Russian that I failed to see the plea- 
sure to be derived from spending the night 
in frivolity, for, in point of fact, there is 
nothing characteristically grand-ducal in 
this curious craze; it is simply Russian, 
and Moscow merchants will spend thou- 
sands of rubles in extravagant amusements 
between midnight and sunrise. The grand 
dukes are typical Russians. They have 
the virtues and the failings of the typical 
Russian, and — I am not sure whether it is 
a virtue or a failing — they are, like all the 
Russians I have ever met, exceedingly sus- 
ceptible to feminine charms. To the Rus- 
sian love is everything, and in Russia wo- 
men have more power to change men's 
lives than in any other land. 

But if the majority of the members of 
the imperial family love extravagant 
amusement, there is one notable exception 
to the rule. The Grand Duchess Eliza- 
beth, widow of the Grand Duke Serge, 
who was assassinated by revolutionists, 
shares the simple tastes of her sister, the 
empress, and detests the empty formality 
of courts as much as I do. When we were 
girls, we saw a great deal of each other at 
Windsor and in the Isle of Wight, and it 
was a great delight to me to talk over the 
old days when I visited her in her palace 
within the fantastic battlements of the 
Kremlin. She was undoubtedly one of the 
most beautiful women in Europe, and her 
husband was extraordinarily handsome. 
Indeed, their beauty and their bearing 
made them the most distinguished couple 
at the great gathering of royal personages 
I met at Buckingham Palace when the 
Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated. 
After the terrible death of her husband, 
the grand duchess devoted herself to the 
education of the Grand Duke Paul's 
motherless children, the Grand Duke 
Dmitri and the Grand Duchess Maria 
Pavlovna, and, that task accomplished, 
she became a sister of charitv. She has 



THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE 



L'5 



founded a convent in Moscow, where she 
follows a severe rule, and devotes herself 
to hospital work and the care of the poor, 
realizing that even a princess has no ex- 
cuse to shirk the responsibilities of life and 
to lead a useless existence. 

How is it that there is such a marked 
difference between the tastes of the em- 
peror and those of his uncles and cousins? 
The answer is not difficult to find. The 
emperor's love of simplicity comes from 
his mother, the Empress Marie, who, now 
that she can indulge her own tastes, lives 
the greater part of the year with Queen 
Alexandra in a small villa on the Danish 
coast. When I visited them there I found 
that they were living as simply as private 
persons who know nothing of the life of 
courts. But while recognizing the influ- 
ence of his mother in the formation of the 
emperor's character, I like to think that 
something of the spirit of Peter the Great 
has been conserved in the imperial family, 
and that the love of work, the courage, 
and the simplicity displayed by Nicholas 
II are in some measure gifts from his great 
ancestor. One afternoon I drove out to 
the islands in a troika, a sledge that might 
have come from fairy-land, covered with 
glistening trappings and luxurious furs, 
and drawn by three horses abreast, and, 
on my way, I stopped to visit the little 
house in which Peter the Great lived when 
he was building his new capital. It is a 
tiny cottage, a mere hut, with two rooms. 
Nothing could be simpler or more unlike 
the vast Winter Palace. Yet I felt, as I 
left this humble abode, that the spirit of 
the man who was content to live in it still 
reigns in the splendid home of his de- 
scendant, the present emperor. 

I have referred to the courage of Nicho- 
las II, and it may surprise those who know 
him only by repute that I should empha- 
size this trait of his character. I myself 
had often heard that he was timorous and 
dreaded assassination. It was therefore a 
great surprise to me to find that he often 
walked from the palace to my hotel, with 
only a single aide-de-camp in attendance. 
Although his grandfather had been assas- 
sinated by revolutionists, he himself ap- 



peared to be absolutely fearless, and to 
disregard the risk he ran by walking about 
St. Petersburg. If precautions are taken 
to protect him now, he permits them solely 
because he is convinced that his life is of 
value to his people. Russia is his one 
thought. Those who do not know him 
often speak or write of him as cruel, tyran- 
nical, caring for nothing but the conserva- 
tion of the imperial power and wealth. 
That is an absolutely false estimate of his 
character. One has only to look into his 
beautiful, blue eyes, to realize that he is 
neither harsh nor cruel, and to understand 
his great tenderness. Indeed, it is his ten- 
derness that distinguishes him from most 
of the sovereigns I know. His affection 
for his mother, his devotion to his wife 
and children, are the outcome of this qual- 
ity, and its exercise is not confined to his 
domestic life. I have heard him speak on 
more than one occasion with the utmost 
feeling of persons who had been con- 
demned to exile in Siberia. It was per- 
fectly clear to me from the way in which 
he spoke of them that, had he followed 
the dictates of his own heart, he would 
have canceled the sentences and pardoned 
the offenders. I could see that the thought 
of their sufferings made him suffer him- 
self, and that it was only a stern sense of 
duty that made him acquiesce in penalties 
he regretted. 

The bulk of the czar's subjects are peas- 
ants, and he very often spoke of their life 
and their customs. Indeed, he displayed 
the keenest interest in plans to better their 
condition and to raise their standard of 
culture. Sovereigns, I have noticed, care- 
fully eschew any reference to questions 
which they and their ministers are unable 
to solve, and it is to me significant that 
neither the czar nor the kaiser has ever 
spoken to me of the Polish question. The 
czar was, however, aware that the Bour- 
bons and the great Polish family of Za- 
moyski are now connected, — my cousin, 
Princess Caroline of Bourbon, married a 
Zamoyski, — and he very delicately ap- 
pointed a gentleman of that family to be 
in attendance on me during my stay in St. 
Petersburg. From intercourse with this 



26 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



gentleman and with other Poles I met in 
Russia I discovered that there is a pro- 
found difference between the Russian and 
the Polish character. There always re- 
mains something of the Asiatic in the Rus- 
sian, but the Pole belongs to the West. 
He has the Slav charm and the Latin cul- 
ture. I know of nothing sadder than the 
tragedy of Poland. That splendid race, 
which once saved Europe from the Turks, 
has been parceled out between three em- 
pires, but neither the iron will of the Ger- 
man emperor nor the autocratic power of 
Nicholas II has succeeded in killing the 
Polish spirit. Small wonder that both at 
Berlin and St. Petersburg the subject was 
not broached at court. 

The emperor is perfectly well aware 
that my sympathies are with the democ- 
racy, but naturally I never attempted to 
force my ideas upon him. I am able to 
understand that a sovereign who wields 
absolute power and to whom the most 
powerful of his ministers is obliged to 
yield may be necessary for Russia at the 
present day. I am convinced that the world 
will be happier, princes and people alike, 
when democracy has triumphed, but I 
realize that in a country like Russia, the 
bulk of whose population are unlettered, 



it would be foolish as well as dangerous 
to introduce suddenly and without prepa- 
ration methods which are successful in the 
West. Education, and education alone, 
can establish the victory of democracy. 
From my home in the capital of a great 
people, in whose motto is enshrined a pro- 
found belief in the brotherhood of man- 
kind and the essential equality of prince 
and peasant, I look out over Europe and 
see the decay of old institutions and the 
movements which are slowly, but cer- 
tainly, reducing those monarchs who still 
retain power to the position of decorative 
figureheads. In Norway the process is 
already finished, and although I confess 
that I was first surprised, I was immensely 
pleased to find, during a recent visit to 
King Haakon and Queen Maud, that they 
were simply the first among equals. I am 
firmly convinced that this will be the ulti- 
mate form of monarchy throughout Eu- 
rope, but long years must pass before the 
Russian people have the culture and po- 
litical knowledge which makes a simple 
Norwegian the equal of his sovereign. 
Meanwhile it is satisfactory to know that 
the man guiding the destinies of the Rus- 
sian people possesses the fine qualities 
which distinguish Nicholas II. 



The Courts of Italy 



1WAS at Genoa, and one spring morn- 
ing I strolled through a net-work of 
narrow streets to the harbor. The sea was 
as blue as a turquoise, gleaming like a 
jewel in the sunshine, and I could not re- 
sist the temptation to hire a boat and 
waste an hour gliding over the enchanted 
waves. The boatman who rowed me was 
a lively fellow. Luckily for me, as I after- 
ward realized, he had not the faintest 
idea who I was, and I let him chatter to 
his heart's content. 

"The old Duke of Galliera gave twenty 
million lire to make that," he said, indi- 
cating, with a jerk of his head, the New 
Harbor, hidden from sight by the build- 
ings on the Molo Vecchio. 

"The Duke of Galliera," he went on, 
"was a fine gentleman; but the Duchess 
was wicked. She was left a widow and 
inherited the enormous, the colossal for- 
tune of her husband. And what did she 
do ? Does the Signora know what she 
did?" 

I did know, but I thought it prudent to 
shake my head. 

The man leant on his oars and looked 
intently at me. 

"The Duchess," he said, "left the title 
and every lira she had and her palace in 
Bologna and all the estates of her Duchy 
to foreigners. A curse on them ! The old 
Duke's son was left a beggar. And the 
Duchess belonged to Genoa; she had rela- 
tives in Genoa. Did she remember them 
when she died ? No, not a single copper 
did they receive. Everything went to the 
Duca di Montpensier, a Frenchman who 
had become a Spaniard, and now it be- 
longs to his son." 

"Really," I said, and I did not mention 
that the Due de Montpensier was my fa- 
ther-in-law, and that I was actually Duch- 
ess of Galliera. 

"If I could only get hold of that man 
and his wife, although she is an Infanta 
of Spain, I would kill them," he shouted 



at me fiercely; "I would show them no 
mercy." 

On the whole, I was not sorry when I 
found myself on land again, and I am con- 
vinced that the man would have upset his 
boat and let me drown, if he had discov- 
ered who I was. And I have often won- 
dered who he was, perhaps a relative of 
the old Duchess. There was truth in the 
story he told, a mystery which neither I 
nor anybody else is ever likely to solve. 
The Duke of Galliera had a son, Phillipo 
Ferrari, who refused absolutely to use the 
privileges which his birth had bestowed 
upon him. What were his reasons, no- 
body knows. Some say that he told the 
Duchess that the Galliera fortune had 
been acquired by evil means, others that 
he believed he was not really the Duke's 
son, others that he is a socialist. And 
why, in default of the son, one of the rich- 
est duchies of Italy was left to my father- 
in-law is a question which remains, and is 
likely to remain, unanswerable. Phillipo 
Ferrari is said to be a cabman in Vienna, 
and fate has decorated me with the unnec- 
essary title of Duchess of Galliera. And 
partly through the strange connection of 
the family into which I married with 
Italy, partly through my love for the most 
beautiful and romantic land in Europe, I 
have lived there a great deal. I used to 
stay a good deal at the magnificent palace 
of the Galliera family in Bologna, a sump- 
tuous place with vast rooms paved with 
mosaic and glittering with rare marbles. 
The people of that city of colonnades and 
cool court-yards took a kindlier view of 
the new owners of the palace than the 
Genoese boatman did, and the ancient 
families of the place had that charm of 
manner which gives such a fascination to 
the cultured society of Italian towns. It 
was a great delight to receive them, and I 
used to enjoy the balls and parties in that 
wonderful palace. 

In most countries society gathers in the 



28 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



capital, and when there is a Court, it acts 
as a magnet to draw people from the prov- 
inces. The unification of Italy, and the 
erection of the Italian kingdom, has not 
materially altered the structure of Italian 
society. It remains what it was when 
Italy was divided into a number of small 
States. Rome and the Quirinal do not 
attract the nobles of Venice, or Florence, 
or Bologna, or of other historic Italian 
towns; they continue to spend the winter 
in the cities with which their families have 
been associated for centuries, giving to 
them a certain brilliance which is not to 
be found in the provincial towns of France 
or England. This was lucky for me, be- 
cause no member of the Royal family of 
Spain can stay in Rome. Obviously we 
cannot go there and ignore the King and 
Queen of Italy, nor can we omit paying a 
visit of respect to the Pope. As the quar- 
rel between the Quirinal and the Vatican 
continues and the Holy Father does not 
permit Catholic princes to visit the King 
of Italy in Rome, the only thing that we 
can do is to stay away. I myself have 
tried more than once to spend a little time 
in the Eternal City, but the result has al- 
ways been the same. As soon as my arrival 
is discovered, I am confronted by one of 
the two Spanish ambassadors, anxiously 
imploring me to go away as quickly as 
possible, and telling me a pitiful tale of 
the diplomatic complications which will 
arise if I persist in staying. Once, how- 
ever, I set aside all objections to my pres- 
ence in Rome, and went to see Leo XIII 
about a very important matter in which 
the Supreme Ruler of the Catholic Church 
could alone help me. I hoped to persuade 
him to annul my marriage with the son 
of the Due de Montpensier, and I felt cer- 
tain that there were solid grounds for do- 
ing so and that the laws of the Catholic 
Church were on my side. 

The Due de Montpensier lived in 
Spain, and had indeed assumed Spanish 
nationality. I saw that if I married his 
son I should be able to remain in Spain 
and be constantly with my dear brother, 
Alfonso XII. That was the argument 
which weighed with me, when it was pro- 



posed that I should marry the Dike's son, 
Antonio. He did not interest me, and I 
knew that I could never love him ; but I 
also knew that a Princess's marriage is 
rarely one of her own choice, and that 
family reasons and international consider- 
ations play a greater part in determining 
it than affection. With Antonio, as a hus- 
band I could remain with the brother 
whom I loved more than anybody on 
earth, and, were I to refuse, it was cer- 
tain that I should be forced to marry 
some foreign Prince, whom I should prob- 
ably dislike, and be obliged to spend the 
rest of my life at a foreign Court without 
the consolation of my brother's love. I 
consented, therefore, to the engagement, 
and it was publicly announced. The Due 
de Montpensier was delighted, for he was 
very fond of me and, moreover, he wanted 
to see his son an Infant of Spain, a title 
he could only acquire by marrying an 
Infanta. 

And Alfonso XII died before the mar- 
riage was celebrated, cut off while still 
young from the splendid work he was 
doing for his country. From my point of 
view, no reason remained for my marriage 
after my brother's death, and I announced 
that it would not take place. 

"I consented to marry Antonio in order 
to be near Alfonso," I said, "and now that 
he is dead, the one argument that 
prompted me to take this course has fallen 
to the ground." 

I had not thought of the political com- 
plications which my refusal would entail. 
When the Due de Montpensier heard that 
I had rejected his son, he flew into such 
an uncontrollable passion that he rushed 
about the room in which he was, breaking 
up the furniture and smashing anything he 
could lay hands on. He had set his heart 
on Antonio's children becoming Infantes 
of Spain, and was furious when he saw 
that it was possible that his ambition 
would not be fulfilled. 

Alfonso's wife, Queen Christina, had 
been appointed Regent. Her position was' 
a difficult one, and there were fears of an 
attempt to place Don Carlos on the 
throne. The Due de Montpensier was ex- 



THE COURTS OF ITALY 



29 



ceedingly wealthy and possessed great in- 
fluence in the country, and it was feared 
that if I proved obdurate and persisted in 
my refusal to marry his son, he would 
throw in his lot with the Carlists and join 
in an attempt to drive the reigning family 
from the throne. The Queen came to me 
and implored me to consent to the mar- 
riage, pointing out to me the harm that 
might be done to Spain if I would not alter 
my decision. Then my sister, the Infanta 
Isabel, came to me, repeated the same argu- 
ments that Queen Christina had used, and 
added new ones. One by one, the Minis- 
ters arrived to argue with me. Nobody 
was on my side. Everybody told me that 
it was my duty to marry Antonio, until at 
last I felt that the fate of Spain depended 
on my decision. I was a mere girl, stand- 
ing at the threshold of life, and the inevi- 
table happened. Wearied and worn out 
with the struggle, I finally gave way. 

"I sacrifice myself for the welfare of 
the nation," I said. 

My marriage is the most cogent proof 
I can offer of my love for Spain, and I 
went to the altar for the wedding cere- 
mony as a victim. 

It is a well-known principle of ecclesi- 
astical law that a marriage contracted 
against the will of one of the parties is in- 
valid, even though it be consummated and 
children be born to the couple. It was on 
this principle that I relied when I went to 
Leo XIII, and my object in asking him 
to annul my marriage was, not to be free 
to marry again, but to be free to manage 
my own fortune in order to leave some 
provision for my children. I brought with 
me to Rome a letter from my mother, 
Queen Isabel, in which she told the Holy 
Father that she could not die happily with- 
out the knowledge that my marriage had 
been annulled and set forth the arguments 
to prove, there were grounds for the Church 
to give me the freedom I desired. 

I was full of hope when I arrived in 
Rome. I was so sure that my cause was 
a just one, so certain that I should gain 
the day, so convinced that there was no 
flaw in the arguments presented in my 
mother's letter. Moreover, I knew that 



Queen Isabel was persona gratissirna at 
the Vatican. She was the first Catholic 
sovereign to signify her acceptance of the 
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as 
a dogma of faith, and she had always done 
her utmost to further the interests of the 
Church. I felt that I could not have had 
a better advocate, and it seemed to me that 
I had only to go and see the Pope in order 
to be released from a crushing burden. 

Wearing the costume which every wo- 
man, be she Princess or peasant, must wear 
when she is received in audience by the 
Pope, a black dress and mantilla, I arrived 
at the Bronze Gates of the Vatican. The 
magnificent staircase was lined with sol- 
diers in the picturesque uniform Michael 
Angelo designed for them, and I was 
promptly made the center of a little pro- 
cession. On either side of me walked an 
urbane ecclesiastic — in palaces one seems 
to spend half one's time walking between 
two polite and deferential individuals — 
and before and behind marched soldiers of 
the Noble Guard. We passed through a 
series of splendid halls to the papal ante- 
chamber. A door was opened, and I passed 
alone into the presence of the Supreme 
Pontiff. I made a genuflexion as I en- 
tered, another in the middle of the room 
and a third as, feeling rather like a grass- 
hopper, I reached the chair in which the 
Holy Father was seated. He bade me sit 
down, and with great kindness thanked me 
for all that I had done for the Church and 
commended my zeal and piety. Being 
conscious that I did not deserve these en- 
comiums, I felt a little surprised, and 
quickly realized that Leo XIII did not 
know who I was and mistook me for my 
sister, the Infanta Paz, who is never hap- 
pier than when she is advancing the inter- 
ests of the Church in Bavaria, her adopted 
country. I quickly explained that I was 
the Infanta Eulalia and presented the let- 
ter I had brought for him from Queen 
Isabel, telling him that it was my moth- 
er's appeal to him to have the marriage 
which had ruined my life annulled. He 
took the letter and held it, but he did not 
read it. 

"Her Majesty's request shall be consid- 



30 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



ered by the Sacred College," he said, and 
began to speak to me in a manner which, 
I have no doubt, he thought might be of 
spiritual benefit to me and might give me 
comfort. But I had not come for comfort 
or to listen to spiritual exhortations. I 
went to see the Pope as I should have gone 
to see a lawyer, hoping that the Head of 
the Catholic Church would put the law in 
motion and give me the freedom I felt cer- 
tain that that law permitted. But His 
Holiness refused to play the part I had as- 
signed to him and spoke as priests speak. 

"Ah!" he said, when I had told him of 
the unbearable position in which I was 
placed, tied to a husband with whom I 
had no sympathy and who spent his time 
with another woman, "this life is a trial, 
and you must bow to the will of God ; but 
we shall try to do what we can for you." 

And doubtless these were suitable words 
to fall from the lips of a Pope, yet they 
seemed to me strange. I had not come 
into his presence inspired with the awe 
and sense of mystery which most people 
feel at a papal audience. I was perfectly 
cool and in a critical frame of mind, and 
it seemed to me extraordinary to listen to 
such advice from a man who, in spite of 
his white cassock, reminded me of the pic- 
tures and statues I had seen of Voltaire. 
The Pope's face seemed to me exactly like 
that of the French atheist as it appears in 
the marble statue placed by Frederick the 
Great in the palace of Mon Repos at Pots- 
dam, where the philosopher used to stay 
with the King. The face of the aged Pope 
was so shrunk, that there seemed nothing 
of it left but the yellowed skin stretched 
over the bones. And when he turned to 
me, I saw shining in the midst of that 
shrivelled countenance, the face of a man 
who had lived through the centuries, dark 
eyes so brilliant and so alert that their 
glance seemed to pierce one, to scorch one 
like a flame. 

"Was he speaking what he felt?" I 
asked myself, "or was he merely repeating 
words he considered it was the duty of a 
Pope to use?" 

I had no intention of feigning a submis- 
sion to fate which I did not feel, and I 



made this evident to His Holiaess when 
he told me to bow to the will of God. 

"That is all very well," I said, "but 
Your Holiness must see that I am placed 
in a terrible position," and I explained 
that the Napoleonic code puts a woman in 
a situation of servility, entirely under the 
control of her husband, whether they are 
living together or apart. 

"I desire to remain a faithful daughter 
of the Church in which I have been born, 
but the circumstances in which I am 
placed are harmful to the life of my soul. 
I find in my heart great bitterness against 
my husband, and even the very name of 
Napoleon is detestable to me because of 
the code he framed and under which I 
suffer." 

Leo XIII smiled when I spoke of my 
detestation of Napoleon and was. evidently 
amused. 

"My daughter," he said, "it is the 
chosen of God who are chastened. We 
ought to thank Him for sending us trials, 
and you may be certain that you will have 
your reward." 

But I w r as not to be put off by such 
phrases, and I continued to urge my point. 

"It is so sad for my children," I said, 
"that I should remain in this terrible po- 
sition. As Your Holiness is aware, any 
fortune which I have can, according to 
law, be claimed by my husband. The law 
gives him the right to dispose of it as he 
likes, while I am deprived of the right of 
leaving it to my children. And I need not 
tell Your Holiness to whom he will prob- 
ably give it." 

Leo XIII turned and fixed his piercing 
eyes upon me. 

"I hope that, with time," he said, speak- 
ing slowly, "your husband's heart will be 
touched by the grace of God, that he will 
leave this woman and come back to you. 

That was the last straw. Nothing 
could have been more distasteful to me 
than the prospect the Pope held out, and I 
saw that it was useless to continue the 
conversation ; moreover, we had been talk- 
ing for three-quarters of an hour and it 
appeared to me that the Pope was drop- 
ping off to sleep. I rose. 



THE COURTS OF ITALY 



31 



"Your Holiness is fatigued," I said, and 
retired without waiting for him to say 
that the audience was ended. 

They were very angry with me for not 
conforming to the prescribed etiquette, 
and I was told that I had behaved very 
badly. It was undoubtedly very kind of 
the Holy Father, who was then old and 
feeble, to give me so long an audience, but 
I think he must have been relieved when I 
somewhat abruptly terminated it. 

After my visit to the Pope, I went to 
see the Secretary-of-State, Cardinal Ram- 
polla, a man with a fine presence and the 
perfect manner of a Sicilian nobleman. I 
repeated to him the arguments I had 
placed before the Pope and told him of my 
mother's great desire to know that my 
marriage was annulled before she died. 
He was exceedingly polite and said the 
matter should be considered, but he was 
careful not to commit himself. And I 
made a point to go and see all the Cardi- 
nals who were then in Rome, and to put 
my case before them. They were all ex- 
cessively urbane, and all of them assured 
me that the question would be most care- 
fully examined. 

From that day to this I have never 
heard another word about it, and no an- 
swer was ever sent by Rome to Queen 
Isabel's letter. I am still convinced that 
according to ecclesiastical law my mar- 
riage could be annulled on the ground 
that I was forced into it against my will, 
but I now realize that I merely wasted my 
time in going to Rome. The scandal 
created by the annulment of the marriage 
of a Spanish Infanta would be too great, 
and to avoid it the Church refuses to put 
her law into operation. 

The Italian Royal family was probably 
not entirely gratified by my visit to the 
Vatican ; but I was able to smooth matters 
over when I met the King elsewhere, and 
he was really very nice about it. He has 
been placed under a ban by the Vatican, 
but this fact does not weigh heavily on 
him, for he is not a man to fear ecclesias- 
tical censure, and his standpoint is rather 
that of a free-thinker than of a Catholic. 
Nevertheless, he would welcome an agree- 



ment with the Vatican which would put 

an end to a trying situation, and change 
for the better the present unfriendly rela- 
tions existing between the papal Court and 
the Quirinal. I knew the King when he 
was Prince of Naples, and saw a good deal 
of him when he came to England for the 
marriage of the Due d'Aosta, as we were 
both staying in the same hotel. He is one 
of the most intelligent Kings I have met, 
and remarkably well-informed. His hobby 
is numismatics, and his love of old coins is 
as great as the King of England's love of 
postage stamps. He has, indeed, become 
a notable authority on the subject. Before 
his marriage, the King was a rather taciturn 
man and his manner somewhat jerky. But 
the charming Princess Elena brought some 
spell with her when she left Montenegro 
and came to Italy to be married to him, 
for I have never known a man whom mar- 
riage has so transformed. It seems to have 
given him an altogether new zest for life 
and great happiness. The simple, almost 
patriarchal Court of Montenegro was an 
excellent school for a modern Queen, and 
translation to the more splendid Italian 
Court has not spoilt Queen Elena; she has 
preserved her love of simplicity, and she 
follows with interest and sympathy the 
democratic movement. 

It seems to be the special prerogative of 
a Queen Mother to be Queen of Hearts, 
and Queen Margerita holds the same 
place in the affection of the Italian people 
as beautiful Queen Alexandra — has ever 
a Queen been more beloved than she? — 
holds in England, and the Empress Marie 
in Russia. I paid a visit to her and King 
Humbert at the Castle of Monza, their 
summer home in the outskirts of the town 
in which the kings of Lombardy were 
crowned, and, although the etiquette of 
the Court was severe, she had a charm 
which made one tolerate the restrictions of 
palace life. Those about her used to com- 
plain that she hardly ever sat down. I 
have remarked that several Queens, whom 
I know, have this rather trying capacity 
for standing, and, as nobody can sit while 
they stand, their guests and their ladies 
and gentlemen-in-waiting are sometimes a 



32 



CABBAGES AND KINGS 



good deal fatigued. Numbers of women 
are not aware that they owe to Queen 
Margerita the pretty fashion of wearing a 
string of pearls in the daytime. But she 
did not limit herself to the single string of 
pearls worn by women of fashion, she was 
simply hung with ropes of pearls morning, 
noon and night, in fact I have never seen 
her without them. 

Although the King of Italy has made 
Rome his capital, the other members of 
the Royal Family have never gone to live 
there, and continue to make their home in 
Turin. In that city there are no less than 
four Courts, for the Duke and Duchess of 
Genoa, the Duke and Duchess of Aosta, 
the Dowager Duchess of Aosta and the 
King's sister, Princess Clothilde, all reside 
there, and the exasperating etiquette pe- 
culiar to Royal personages is rigorously 
maintained in their palaces. Gentlemen-in- 
vvaiting and ladies-in-waiting are always 
in attendance on them, and it used to sur- 
prise me that people could be found to 
devote themselves to such an insufferably 
dull occupation as that of serving in minia- 
ture Courts, until I remembered that some 
of them may be glad to do the work, if 
work it can be called, for the sake of being 
maintained and of receiving the salaries 
attached to their offices. English prin- 
cesses have the daily distraction of opening 
bazaars, but little happens to enliven the 
Courts of Turin. When I have stayed 
there, the chief excitement of the day has 
invariably been a drive to a park outside 
the city, where the Royal personages 
walked for a little, attended by the inevi- 
table ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting, and, 
after half-an-hour of that mild form of 
exercise, drove back to their homes. These 
proceedings did not appear to awaken any 
great interest in the citizens of Turin, for 
in Italy, as in most other countries, the 
public has ceased to concern itself about 
the little doings of Princes and Princesses. 

The Dowager Duchess of Aosta some- 
times shows her independence by freeing 
herself from the Royal bonds when she is 
abroad, and I remember her once arriving 
in Paris entirely unattended. She was 
Princess Laetitia Bonaparte before her 



marriage and enjoys the style oi Imperial 
Highness, while, rather oddly, the young 
Duchess of Aosta is a Princess of the house 
of Bourbon and sister of the Due d'Or- 
leans. She is a somewhat masculine type 
of woman, and spends a great deal of her 
time in Abyssinia. She leaves her husband 
and two boys and, with no companion ex- 
cept an elderly Englishwoman, sets out on 
a hunting expedition. She is lost in the 
heart of Africa for months, and then sud- 
denly reappears and settles down to the 
hum-drum life of her palace. But soon 
she hears again the call of the wild, and is 
away once more. What she does in Abys- 
sinia nobody knows, if one excepts the 
elderly Englishwoman. The country seems 
to have cast a spell on her, and she cannot 
resist its fascination. The Duke of Genoa, 
Queen Margerita's brother, and- his wife, 
who is a Bavarian Princess, live in the 
same palace as the Dowager Duchess of 
Aosta, but their households are independ- 
ent and, in point of fact, the two Duch- 
esses rarely see each other. The Duke is 
almost a recluse ; he spends several hours 
in his private chapel every day, lost in 
prayer and meditation. His piety, his 
profound belief in the teaching of the 
Catholic Church, his veneration for the 
successors of St. Peter, have all doubtless 
contributed to his determination to end his 
days in Turin, and prevented his taking 
part in the life of the Court established 
by the Kings of Italy in the Roman palace 
which, less than fifty years ago, belonged 
to the Popes. 

I was a little surprised the first time I 
went to Turin to find that the Piedmont- 
ese dialect of Italian was spoken in royal 
circles. To understand what was said 
sometimes required close attention, even 
when one knew Italian well, and I have 
found a similar difficulty in other Italian 
cities. In Bologna, for instance, where I 
have lived so much, the cultured classes, as 
well as the peasants, talked dialect, and 
traveling about Italy, one seemed con- 
stantly under the necessity of learning new 
words and phrases. 

There are so many beautiful Italian 
cities in which agreeable society may be 



THE COURTS OF ITALY 



33 



enjoyed that, had ' one to choose one in 
which to live permanently, it would be 
difficult to come to a decision. Venice is 
one of the most adorable, and the time I 
spent with Duke and Duchess of Genoa 
at the King's palace there was a dream of 
delight. But there is one objection, and 
that a serious one, to a prolonged stay in 
Venice, and that is the difficulty of getting 
proper exercise. As everybody seemed 
prepared to spoil me, when I was there, I 
made it clear that it was essential for me 
to do something more vigorous than glid- 
ing down silent canals in a gondola or 
strolling in the Piazza. It was therefore 
arranged that I should play tennis at the 
Arsenal, and that indulgence gave me the 
one thing that seemed lacking in the 
charming life of the city. Italians can 
play tennis very well when they choose, 
and Monsignor Montagnini, the Papal 
Legate who was turned out of France 
when diplomatic relations between the Re- 



public and the Vatican were ruptured, and 
who played so false to me was a case in 
point. He played an excellent game, and 
we often had a set together in Paris. Lit- 
tle did I guess what his means were and 
never will I forget his false behavior when 
his papers were captured. In Venice, too, 
I found some good players, and so man- 
aged to get the vigorous exercise I 
needed. Apart from this, I lived the life 
of the Venetians, walked in the Piazza 
from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, 
took the air in a gondola about half-past 
five, went occasionally to the opera at the 
Fenice, that most exquisite of theatres, and 
ended the day by dancing in the enchanted 
palaces that rise from the sea. It was 
often sunrise when I stepped into a royal 
barge with gondoliers in scarlet and, to 
the rhythmic music of oars that cut the 
water and the splash of the spray that fell 
from their blades, floated through the rosy 
dawn to the Royal Palace. 



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